Orpheus is the University of Dayton's literary and artistic magazine, published twice a year entirely by students. As an expression of visual media and literature, Orpheus promotes the arts through its publication and through chalk murals, talent shows, and poetry readings. Students contribute their own work, which can include painting, photography, essays, short stories, poetry, and more.
Note: Some of the content in this digital collection reveals prejudices that are not condoned by the University of Dayton.
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Orpheus, Spring 2025: Porchswing
University of Dayton
From Melina Blank, literary editor: Porchswing: According to Google, it’s “a swing on a porch usually made of wood leaving space for two people to sit and swing.” To Orpheus, it is the warm breath of familiarity that hums in one’s soul. The soul knows just about everything that inspires it, transfixes it, guides it. Home, a word we make sense of in terms of physical place, is not so definitively tangible. Instead, what inspires and transfixes and guides us could very well be a person, a song, a belief, a feeling.
If I didn’t know any better, I would say this is why we create art. Through any artistic medium, we give a feeling a face, a situation some eyes, an emotion a mouth. We plant four walls and a roof over ambiguities; we speak our own languages and they are somehow understood.
