“Art” is a poem by Sim Ling Thee, age 13. The poem is written in the second person. It begins with a stanza composed of a long list of different accidents and mishaps that can occur in the creative process, from spilled milk to a father throwing artwork in the trash. Some of these lines are very short, just two words, while others are much longer and more detailed.
In the second stanza, the poem’s “you” cries, panics, and loses hope—the artwork is a disgrace. But then, the “you” of the poem finds that piece of artwork later, takes a very long look, and realizes that perhaps this really is art.
How does this poet play with poetic forms?
This poem uses the poetic device of anaphora—a repeated word or phrase:
A drop
A splotch
A paintbrush gone astray
A crash
A puddle
A mug of milk collapsed on the table
By repeating “a” at the beginning of this line, the poet does two really interesting things. First, they tie all of these separate ideas together: drops, splotches, spilled milk, errant paintbrushes. All of these, the poem tells us through repetition, are similar and are part of something larger. The second interesting thing is that the writer creates a real sense of indefiniteness. They didn’t write “The drop / The splotch / The paintbrush gone astray.” Those “the”s would have pointed to a series of specific events. But instead, the poet makes the events more vague. These are the sorts of things that could happen—the poem is in a hypothetical space.
In the second half of the poem, the hypothetical becomes actual. We are pulled into a narrative, where the “you” of the poem despairs:
After much gasping and searching and berating,
After much crying and panicking and apologizing,
You lose hope, you feel resigned:
You think the artwork is terrible, the biggest disgrace of all time.
Now, we aren’t in the space of the distant “a” anymore. Instead, we are in the poem’s central crisis. No matter which of these accidents happened to the artwork, the effect is the same: the “you” of the poem feels ashamed to have ruined the artwork.
Once again, we have an element of repetition in this second stanza. But unlike the first, the repeated words change and cycle back—the lines begin “After / After,” “You / You,” “You / You,” and “Perhaps / Perhaps.” The only line in the entire poem whose beginning doesn’t get repeated anywhere else is this one:
But when you finally find that piece of art,
This is the poem’s big turning point! And the fact that the word “but” lives on its own is proof. After this, the “you” of the poem really starts to consider the artwork in a new way:
You take a looooong look.
You step back and think to yourself:
Perhaps this is art.
Perhaps this is art.
The repetition at the end helps the poem come to a satisfying conclusion. There’s a lovely feeling of resolution, like when a song repeats its final line many times during a fade-out.
Discussion questions:
- Where does humor appear in the poem? How does the humor affect the poem overall?
- Can you identify any other moments in the poem where the writer creates a pattern out of language?
Art
A drop
A splotch
A paintbrush gone astray
A crash
A puddle
A mug of milk collapsed on the table
A shriek
A fault line
A gaping tear on the paper
A kid
A toilet break
A sister folding artwork into a paper plane
A bin
A careless hand
A father throwing the masterpiece into the trash
After much gasping and searching and berating,
After much crying and panicking and apologizing,
You lose hope, you feel resigned:
You think the artwork is terrible, the biggest disgrace of all time.
But when you finally find that piece of art,
You take a looooong look.
You step back and think to yourself:
Perhaps this is art.
Perhaps this is art.
Singapore
