Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its colour.
– Separation, by W.S. Merwin
*
While I was browsing through several icons (yes, Sera and I have been indulging in icon-hunting on the Internet for quite some time now), I chanced upon this poem by W. S. Merwin. At first I was shocked by how short it was. Certainly three lines alone are sufficient to start a whole debate on what makes a poem a poem (and, for that matter, how short can a short story be?).
Metaphors serve to encapsulate. Symbols serve to take that encapsulation a step further by giving it an imbued significance, similar to how apotheosis works. Conceits, or extended metaphors, grandly attempt to show how shades of life can be seen in a great number of aspects associated to a particular metaphor. Similes emphasise a particular emotion or action by likening it to something we are familiar with.
I see a metaphor, a simile, and an illustration of a conceit in the above poem.
But surely, what am I doing? Some people (okay, many *coughLLOYDcough*) believe that interpretation, annotation and analyses takes away the beauty of reading. I’m different though. I believe that if we take the time to show how skilled, how beautiful, and how thoughtful an author is when he pens something down, we take a work of art and show how it moves us.
That’s what I do when I analyse. And that’s why I’ve come to love literature so much.
Because right now, all I can think about is the sheer potency of these three lines. And if one was to say how a metaphor serves to encapsulate, certainly one might agree, that in response to the above poem, an emoticon would also serve the exact same purpose when I go:
<3
yam.
