Home > Witness Summary & Study Guide

Witness | Introduction

Liz Waldner’s “Witness” is the final poem in the fifth section (“Triangle”) of Waldner’s Euclidian-inspired A Point Is That Which Has No Part
 (2000), following sections named “Point,” “Line,” “Circle,” and “Square.” Developing an extended metaphor that likens the coming of dawn (and the new day) to a wild horse, “Witness” exemplifies what is strongest in Waldner’s poetry: diction, intellectualism, and an appreciation of science and nature. The combination of poetry and science characterizes much of Waldner’s poetry. In her later work Saving the Appearances (2004), for instance, she uses Plato’s idea, which was later applied by Copernicus, that there is a fundamental spirit that links the empirical world (its appearances) and the revelations it causes.

Witness Summary

Lines 1–2

The title of “Witness” identifies the subject at hand as bearing witness to an event (in this case, the appearance of a comet). The opening words of the poem, “I saw,” stated in the past tense, indicate that the witnessed moment happened in the past and now remains clear in memory.

In the first couplet, readers are also asked to bear witness to the initiation of a metaphor that has both empirical and philosophical connotations. A “star” is compared to a horse breaking the rope that has kept it confined to “the stables.” The rope of dust streams from the comet in the direction away from the Sun which it orbits. Without gravity the Earth (the speaker’s vantage point) would not be held together as one sphere, and its orbit would not be fixed by its attraction to the Sun. Gravity affects locations of heavenly bodies and how and why they can be viewed by the speaker from the Earth. The speaker’s imagination is shaped, then, by both the physical laws of the universe and by the poet’s inclination to use metaphoric language.

Lines 3–4

Moving beyond its former location in the orbit/stable, the star/horse is imagined as “homeless.” It appears dislocated and moving. The speaker asserts that the star/horse will find another “home.” This new home is identified both in terms of time... » Complete Witness Summary