The inspiration for this poem came when I was sitting in my astronomy class, and the professor showed a few artists’ renderings of supernovae. The images conjured up an odd dichotomy, where one part of me almost mourned for the civilizations that may have lived near this star before the supernova. Hence, the two contrasting halves of this poem coax both of those feelings. In its concision and abrupt enjambments, this poem was a radical break from anything I had written before. It took a wealth of editing out words to pare this down to what it is now, but that process got me to appreciate every word. I intended the abundance of white space to be conducive to individual readers’ connections and created a handful of double meanings and otherwise ambiguous lines.
JAMES SBORDONE (CAS ‘18) is pursuing a double major in International Relations and Linguistics. Born and raised in Newton, Massachusetts, he was first inspired to write by his mother, who read Robert Frost poems aloud.