Jennifer Chang and Silence

Recently, I was browsing YouTube and stumbled upon an interview with Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Jennifer Chang (Khaled Muttawa was suppose to join, but was in Libya at the time as it had just been liberated). I have already read and written about Muttawa and Nezhukumatathil, but Chang was a new world.

Upon reading Chang's book the similarities between the three poets became distinguishable.

1. Nezhukumatathil focuses on family in the second half of her book Lucky Fish, Chang focuses on family and poverty in the second half of her book The History of Anonymity. 
2. Muttawa struggles with identity issues and migration in his first novel Zodiac of Echoes, Nezhukumatathil also struggles with her concept of home and womanhood in Lucky Fish.
3. Muttawa and Chang both exploit similar syntax and line breaks.
4. All three explore themes of belonging, rootedness, and language.  

The comparisons can go on and on.

What interests me about them and about poetry in general is ... silence.

In the interview I watched on YouTube Nezhukumatathil elaborates upon the idea of silence in poetry as a reflection of meaning similar to that of the written word. Line breaks, words spliced in a poem, or isolated in one line, or simply the fadding off of an image are some examples of how silence can be exploited to reflect meaning.

Below I delve further into Chang's poetry and silence.






In The History of Anonymity, the very term anonymity is an example of silence.

Take the following poem "...those who speak most say nothing."

Silence and speech are both a gift and an ending.

Take for example the title "...those who spoke most say nothing." The ellipses in the beginning indicates speech as well as silence, just like the title states that the speakers speak and are quite. The two are not juxtaposed as much as they are merged.

The same can be said about the last two stanzas. The persona wants to "Rub out the blue bud" just to "swallow its petal shreds." The poem then concludes "if I eat what I kill,/ will I rot as it does". Eating what you kill when you are eating what is a part of you, as the petal shreds are, is a continuation of the merging of silence and sound we see in the title.

Other factors are addressed in this merging of silence and sound, like death (ending), life (sky), essence (air and questions), and belonging ("Can the sand/marry me?").

This is a powerful statement to make. To bring together what is conventionally contrasted is a strong reflection of how reality really functions. The world is not a binary construct, we don't live or think solely in opposites. Much of our understanding of anything is a mix and match patch work. Silence is a big part of this and is as much a statement as the word "freedom" is.

Since my work is speech...