Madeline Tiger
Wild Words and Space in a Stunning Collection:
Veronica Golos, Vocabulary of Silence (Red Hen Press, c 2011)
“‘I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man,... But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured.’ ”...President James A. Garfield, as quoted by Candice Millard in Destiny of the Republic
I could quote from every page of Vocabulary of Silence to show the compelling arrangements of words and spaces designed by Veronica Golos. In dealing with unspeakable human tragedy, her striking displays of lines and spaces express a wildness the words alone barely describe.
This innovative collection of poems displays heightened language, often by being in a reduced, concentrated pattern of phrases, and equally intense silences, represented by daring wide spaces between lines, phrases, single words. The subjects of the poems vary—from contemporary war and torture to biblical themes; from horror at Abu Graib to the image of a wild bird; but the motif of speech and no-speech, deprivation of speech, moves through all the poems, as does the poet’s effort to articulate for all who suffer, and just as passionately for herself. The poems are “stunning”—as in shocking, as if the reader were struck physically; at the same time, the writing is beautiful. Images are sometimes metaphorical, but often simply real, direct. And the sound patterns, while giving the requirements of voices, support the meanings. The silence is equally vivid; it is as much an articulation in these pages as speechlessness is in suffering.
Even in simply describing an egret, Golos tells how “...birth always clings,/ refuses even as it pushes/ so that to become what/ you were made to be/ the body must conjure out/ of the kiln of air/...” Having gone deep in so few lines, as if in and out of the “kiln”, her reader feels surprising passion. Then comes a sudden space--And the poem continues with (sic) “...slateblue shallows, what turns/ leg and beak black, leaving/ for the last, a stain/ of yellow for the foot.”As in so many of these pages, a reader is taken up with word play and subtle alliterations, while riding the strong lines, while moving in the articulate spaces: “...Full and feathered, lacey plumes/ a spread of white inside/ a denser white. The boy/...” and there is a huge space here: does a reader wonder why a boy is introduced into this poem of the beautiful egret? The lines continue as the boy “..watches it go to wing,” and we see the lovely bird circling in the sky, “...then/ unfasten into the wet shadows/ below.” These are succinct lines, moving down the center of the page. Another large space, and on the far left side of the page comes the last line: “Boy. Gun. Blank Sky. . .” On rereading one realizes what unfasten means in the two short lines and huge space above this blunt ending.
Golos’s lines are flags, she declares; her words are tinder, another poem reminds us; they are flames, they are signals. In describing cruelties and horrors, however, Golos is not just waving at the wrong-doers, the “warriors” and murderers: she implicates herself through painful passages.
When the poet experiments with spaces and leaps or allows the phrasing and spacing to work against sentence structure, her meanings bleed through, as in a poem about Cain. How else can she demonstrate what is inside the murderous brother but by half phrases and great spaces between fragments of the unthinkable: “It A voice / an itch always upon my skin / for It / I build earthmud/ mound/ all was/ green ..... brother laughing / and ...”
A reader has to take in the fragments, how they carry urgency and despair and disconnected feelings, and one has to hold one’s breath through the awareness that Golos’s spaces demand.
The book has so many virtues—of form and breathing, of sympathies and responses— that one has to begin by reacting to the sounds and silences at the same time as responding to the stressful subject matter.
In the title of the section “EDEN IS RUIN”, the slant rhyme supports the ironies to follow, as subtle prosodic devices do throughout the book. The first poem here is “Warrior”. The warrior is speaking. He is haunted, he is a witness and a killer. “One can not measure/ death. I know...” This is a conclusion for many of the poems; one can, however, name death and accuse, in endless, furious ways, as Golos does, with guilt as well as pity. All the while decrying historic cruelties, she is consistently writing about her selfhood, and her search for... what has no name: In “birth(ing) Word” she declares, “... I am already transparent, already a/ shimmer, an aperture leading into aperture; then for a moment–still–solid–a passage.” Birthing and breathing connect, in this poem, and so do sounds: first a “zero howl”, then “the aftermath of echo...” then, translation, and “vowels I wept out...” After declaring herself “strung between each song...,” the language deals with speech, then the effort in writing: “Carved word to flesh to form” gives the image of inextricable body-and-language that drives the poem until it asks “What is it to be human?” This ultimate question makes another connection with all the rest of the work in the collection. There are no answers, but one dream speaker gathers “fragments of clay.../ / as if I were going to make a bowl,/ using what is broken, as potters do.” And in “Unruly Alphabet” we see “The days glue together,” not for understanding, but “they do seem to be writing something.” There are women dancing with veils, and in this movement comes a new kind of awareness: “Rebellious,/ she billows out, a sheet loosened from its line.” Or: “Who speaks? Who listens?” Knowledge is in the noticing; art
is in the going on. And there is always the great blue sky.
The poem about shooting down a beautiful bird, in the middle of the collection, makes a startling link with other pieces of more
grotesque imagery or more telling “politics”. The threading of themes and images are as amazing as the arrangements of lines and spaces, all part of the telling, the fierce outcry, the heartbreak as well as an unspoken plea for the great beauty of this terrifying world, which poetry sustains.
Wild Words and Space in a Stunning Collection:
Veronica Golos, Vocabulary of Silence (Red Hen Press, c 2011)
“‘I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man,... But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured.’ ”...President James A. Garfield, as quoted by Candice Millard in Destiny of the Republic
I could quote from every page of Vocabulary of Silence to show the compelling arrangements of words and spaces designed by Veronica Golos. In dealing with unspeakable human tragedy, her striking displays of lines and spaces express a wildness the words alone barely describe.
This innovative collection of poems displays heightened language, often by being in a reduced, concentrated pattern of phrases, and equally intense silences, represented by daring wide spaces between lines, phrases, single words. The subjects of the poems vary—from contemporary war and torture to biblical themes; from horror at Abu Graib to the image of a wild bird; but the motif of speech and no-speech, deprivation of speech, moves through all the poems, as does the poet’s effort to articulate for all who suffer, and just as passionately for herself. The poems are “stunning”—as in shocking, as if the reader were struck physically; at the same time, the writing is beautiful. Images are sometimes metaphorical, but often simply real, direct. And the sound patterns, while giving the requirements of voices, support the meanings. The silence is equally vivid; it is as much an articulation in these pages as speechlessness is in suffering.
Even in simply describing an egret, Golos tells how “...birth always clings,/ refuses even as it pushes/ so that to become what/ you were made to be/ the body must conjure out/ of the kiln of air/...” Having gone deep in so few lines, as if in and out of the “kiln”, her reader feels surprising passion. Then comes a sudden space--And the poem continues with (sic) “...slateblue shallows, what turns/ leg and beak black, leaving/ for the last, a stain/ of yellow for the foot.”As in so many of these pages, a reader is taken up with word play and subtle alliterations, while riding the strong lines, while moving in the articulate spaces: “...Full and feathered, lacey plumes/ a spread of white inside/ a denser white. The boy/...” and there is a huge space here: does a reader wonder why a boy is introduced into this poem of the beautiful egret? The lines continue as the boy “..watches it go to wing,” and we see the lovely bird circling in the sky, “...then/ unfasten into the wet shadows/ below.” These are succinct lines, moving down the center of the page. Another large space, and on the far left side of the page comes the last line: “Boy. Gun. Blank Sky. . .” On rereading one realizes what unfasten means in the two short lines and huge space above this blunt ending.
Golos’s lines are flags, she declares; her words are tinder, another poem reminds us; they are flames, they are signals. In describing cruelties and horrors, however, Golos is not just waving at the wrong-doers, the “warriors” and murderers: she implicates herself through painful passages.
When the poet experiments with spaces and leaps or allows the phrasing and spacing to work against sentence structure, her meanings bleed through, as in a poem about Cain. How else can she demonstrate what is inside the murderous brother but by half phrases and great spaces between fragments of the unthinkable: “It A voice / an itch always upon my skin / for It / I build earthmud/ mound/ all was/ green ..... brother laughing / and ...”
A reader has to take in the fragments, how they carry urgency and despair and disconnected feelings, and one has to hold one’s breath through the awareness that Golos’s spaces demand.
The book has so many virtues—of form and breathing, of sympathies and responses— that one has to begin by reacting to the sounds and silences at the same time as responding to the stressful subject matter.
In the title of the section “EDEN IS RUIN”, the slant rhyme supports the ironies to follow, as subtle prosodic devices do throughout the book. The first poem here is “Warrior”. The warrior is speaking. He is haunted, he is a witness and a killer. “One can not measure/ death. I know...” This is a conclusion for many of the poems; one can, however, name death and accuse, in endless, furious ways, as Golos does, with guilt as well as pity. All the while decrying historic cruelties, she is consistently writing about her selfhood, and her search for... what has no name: In “birth(ing) Word” she declares, “... I am already transparent, already a/ shimmer, an aperture leading into aperture; then for a moment–still–solid–a passage.” Birthing and breathing connect, in this poem, and so do sounds: first a “zero howl”, then “the aftermath of echo...” then, translation, and “vowels I wept out...” After declaring herself “strung between each song...,” the language deals with speech, then the effort in writing: “Carved word to flesh to form” gives the image of inextricable body-and-language that drives the poem until it asks “What is it to be human?” This ultimate question makes another connection with all the rest of the work in the collection. There are no answers, but one dream speaker gathers “fragments of clay.../ / as if I were going to make a bowl,/ using what is broken, as potters do.” And in “Unruly Alphabet” we see “The days glue together,” not for understanding, but “they do seem to be writing something.” There are women dancing with veils, and in this movement comes a new kind of awareness: “Rebellious,/ she billows out, a sheet loosened from its line.” Or: “Who speaks? Who listens?” Knowledge is in the noticing; art
is in the going on. And there is always the great blue sky.
The poem about shooting down a beautiful bird, in the middle of the collection, makes a startling link with other pieces of more
grotesque imagery or more telling “politics”. The threading of themes and images are as amazing as the arrangements of lines and spaces, all part of the telling, the fierce outcry, the heartbreak as well as an unspoken plea for the great beauty of this terrifying world, which poetry sustains.