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Poetry Prompt: What Silence Does

By Callie Feyen 2 Comments

In her book of sonnets, Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking, Jeanne Murray Walker has several poems exploring silence. To introduce them, she uses a quotation from Max Picard: “Silence is the only phenomenon today that is ‘useless.’ It does not fit into the world of profit and utility: it simply is.”

I’m not sure I agree, or perhaps I don’t completely understand. I think silence, like love, does a lot.

At times, usually at night when I don’t hear the hush of trees, the murmur of crickets, the cars driving towards Detroit or maybe Chicago, silence scares me. “Nothing’s happening,” I think. I don’t like the thought that everyone and everything is taking a break at the same time.

Other times, like when I walk into a library and breathe in the pages of the books, silence settles what is restless inside of me, even if I can’t name it. I’ll flip through pages of books and magazines not looking to be tamed of this restlessness, but content to let it run wild in the silence of the story I choose to enter into.

In a poem about going to the ocean, Jeanne Murray Walker contemplates what she sees and hears — the “green-gray water,” the “wheeze and hiss” of its “great body.” In the poem she has no book or phone; there’s nothing else going on, nothing else to do except see and hear the ocean. “Therefore the mind finds metaphor,” she writes. And then:

How I see better what
is there
after sitting quietly with what is not.

I think that in both my case and in Jeanne Murray Walker’s silence does something to us, and while I shudder to think of making a campaign for silence, complete with a platform, branding, and hashtags, I do think silence’s usefulness, like love’s, is vital. Perhaps these entities that make us feel something are dependent on us. Could it be that silence and love are around us all the time, waiting, hoping we’ll find them, hoping we’ll let them mark us, with no care in the world whether they are useful?

Try It

This week, consider what silence is and what it does. Then write a poem about it.

Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s one from Sandra Heska King we enjoyed:

Hard Prune

Several weeks ago
I took my unsullied loppers
and mutilated our unwieldy hibiscus.
Chopped it five feet to one,
its trunk to two dry nubs.
I didn’t know if it would live or die.
Apparently you’re not supposed
to do this in the winter.
But this is the land of
perpetual summer.
Today I noted bursts of green.
Perhaps it will bloom pink again.
Perhaps there is still hope.

Photo by Giuseppe Milo Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Callie Feyen.

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Callie Feyen
Callie Feyen
Callie Feyen likes Converse tennis shoes and colorful high heels, reading the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the Twilight series. Her favorite outfit has always been a well-worn pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, but she wants hoop skirts with loads of tulle to come back into style. Her favorite line from literature comes from Sharon Creech’s Absolutely Normal Chaos: “I don’t know who I am yet. I’m still waiting to find out.” Feyen has served as the At-Risk Literacy Specialist in the Ypsilanti Public Schools and is the author of Twirl: my life with stories, writing & clothes and The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet. Find Callie at CallieFeyen.com.
Callie Feyen
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Filed Under: article, Blog, Books, Poems, poetry, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, Poets, writer's group resources, writing prompts

About Callie Feyen

Callie Feyen likes Converse tennis shoes and colorful high heels, reading the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the Twilight series. Her favorite outfit has always been a well-worn pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, but she wants hoop skirts with loads of tulle to come back into style. Her favorite line from literature comes from Sharon Creech’s Absolutely Normal Chaos: “I don’t know who I am yet. I’m still waiting to find out.” Feyen has served as the At-Risk Literacy Specialist in the Ypsilanti Public Schools and is the author of Twirl: my life with stories, writing & clothes and The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet. Find Callie at CallieFeyen.com.

Comments

  1. Sandra Heska King says

    January 21, 2020 at 9:23 am

    “Could it be that silence and love are around us all the time, waiting, hoping we’ll find them, hoping we’ll let them mark us, with no care in the world whether they are useful?” I think they are more useful than we can know.

    I might like a little adventure, but I’m one of those who craves silence. Also, I love this book. I underlined this,

    How I see better what
    is there
    after sitting quietly with what is not.

    Also, thanks for highlighting my poem. The leaves seem to be getting fuller. I’m watching them day by day.

    Reply
  2. Will Willingham says

    January 25, 2020 at 10:58 am

    I’m pondering this idea of whether silence would recognize its own usefulness.

    Reply

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