Introduction
A poem by Jessica Knight titled “Secrets under trees” is a reflection on how secrets should not be revealed. The author uses a metaphor of a tree and its leaves as a way of showing how secrets should be left to rot (Knight, 2016). My original art piece, a poem, was created after reading Knight’s work, shares a common theme with “Secrets under trees,” revealed personal experience of sharing secrets.
Inspiration
Tiny little secrets
Get buried in the dirt,
And if they were dug up,
Someone would probably get hurt,
So leave them safely there,
To rot amongst the leaves,
Admiring instead,
The truth in summer’s green trees.
This poem is by Jessica Knight (2016), written in 2016 and titled “Secrets under trees.” Knight is a contemporary poet who posts her works online. Hence, it is difficult to trace the origins of this work. However, one can assume that the background, based on the theme of this poem, is Knight’s experience of hiding secrets or having them revealed. The work inspires one to think about how people choose to disclose or withhold some information.
Original Poem
Secrets should be left in peace
Even if you know it, do not tease
If you reveal the secret you learned
Someone will eventually get hurt.
This poem was inspired by Knight’s view of how secrets should not be disclosed. Moreover, this original peace explicitly mentioned the result of telling someone’s secret or teasing one about this knowledge. The result is someone being hurt by their intimate secret being revealed. Hence. This poem warns against doing something that can cause distress to another person. Mainly, the background of this poem is a personal experience, where my secrets were revealed by people I trusted and the hurt that these events caused.
Connection
Thematically, the two poems share a theme of secrets and how one should deal with them. In a way, these works are advising the reader how they should treat secrets, mainly, leave them “to rot.” Hence, the similarity is the theme and the warning against revealing secrets that the two poems imply. However, there are differences in the mediums used by Knight because she uses metaphors to illustrate her idea. The medium here is important because Knight’s work is longer and uses a symbol of a tree, although both poems use simple language. Hence, the experiences of a reader differ because the first poem engages one’s imagination, while the second uses less diverse mediums to illustrate the idea. Overall, although the two poems are written for the purpose of discussing the same topic, the medium and the author’s choices for depicting the issue of secret sharing differ dramatically, making these poems two unique pieces of literature.
Reference
Knight, Jessica. (2016). Secrets under trees. Web.