As I was driving one day this week, I was thinking about how cool our senses really are. We can perceive light - we can perceive smells, we can perceive materials and heat, we can perceive tastes, and we can even perceive vibrations as sounds. It sounds a little silly writing it down, but I still think it’s really incredible that we take these senses for granted. My amazing poet, Kay Ryan, actually wrote a poem about sound waves - reminding me of the inner thoughts I had during that long drive across Boca.
The poem, called “Sharks' Teeth”, discusses how sound and more specifically our perception of sound gets its punch from “small shark's-tooth shaped fragments of rest angled in it.” She writes that in order to draw importance in conversation or even just soundbites, people utilize pauses and breaks. She compares the shape of the soundwave to a shark’s tooth. It’s a great comparison, in my eyes, because it shows how jagged sound waves are but also portrays their importance and makes the reader pay closer attention to them.
Kay Ryan extends the metaphor further by suggesting that a “bit of tail or fin” can be found in peaceful and quiet places. This gives the reader the idea that a bigger part of silence can be found in parks, suburbs, or other places. The poem made me appreciate the silent places and quiet places we have in our community. I thought of our school labyrinth - a place with definitely more than a shark’s tooth of silence.
After reflecting on the entire poem, Ryan is clearly comparing the idea of silence to a shark as a whole. A shark tooth alludes to a shark being somewhere, but a “bit of tail or fin” provides further proof that a shark is really there.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/42129/sharks-teeth
Silence is a virtue in today's world. We should enjoy it when we get it.
ReplyDeleteThat is quite a remarkable poem. I agree that silence is taken for granted and its uniqueness is often overlooked. When everything is peaceful and silent, that is when we are able to come up with the most remarkable thoughts (such as our perception world, come up with new concepts, and contemplate our existence and what we were put on this earth to accomplish).
ReplyDeleteWe need to learn how to enjoy silence more. however, I think the past year has taught the world very much on how to survive in a quiet place.
ReplyDeleteI think I appreciate silence from time to time, but I also think that sometimes when silence comes disaster follows, but that might just be me.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fascinating choice to use a shark, which are often (wrongly) thought of as hyper aggressive and violent, of all things to represent calming silence.
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