Image: “Terry’s Keys” by Kim Beckham. “What You Thought You Lost” was written by Wendy Videlock for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
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WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU LOST
—from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2024, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “‘What You Thought You Lost’ begins with comparing what was lost to a prayer–an apt simile, given that this poem feels like a prayer, with its reverent language, melodic sound, and spiritual references. What a transcendent connection, too, the poet draws between the concrete image of keys hanging on a beach fence and the abstract concept of something lost (we don’t know what, but somehow we have a sense of it) hanging in the air ‘by a thread like an ancient/pagan prayer.’ There’s already an intangible quality to artist Kim Beckham’s beach scene, a sense of possibility, but the metaphysical tone of the poem adds greater complexity to the photo. One of the things I love most about the ekphrastic challenge is how differently I can see a piece of art after I read a poem about it, and ‘What You Thought You Lost’ made me look at this image in a way I never could have without it.”