Thinking About Silence

Silence is far too common, used as a safety blanket to protect people from the vulnerability of voicing raw thoughts and ideas for others to hear. In this section of Adrienne Rich’s, “Twenty-One Love Poems”, she requests that people expose their thoughts. These thoughts have a purpose, and they should not be disregarded and left float into the abyss.  Rich refers to mind as the “pond where drowned things live”(147) where the “drowned things”(147) are our muted thoughts. People consistently have a filter turned on, preventing them from saying what they are thinking.  Intelligent beings capable of critical thinking and problem solving should not allow these ideas to fall into the dark.  When Rich says, “I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.”(147), she is suggesting forgetting the filter and spitting out genuine thoughts.  The word “dripping”(147) infers that the thoughts should not be revised. Rather than removing them from the water and drying them off with a towel, expose them to the world, saturated with authenticity.  These legitimate thoughts are what can trigger intriguing conversation, developing an opportunity for an unlimited flow of ideas.  Rich hopes people will allow their thoughts to come out though it will take time.  She writes, “It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces,/even your face at another age.”(147).  Children are less cautious with their words, less afraid to speak their minds likely because they are naive.  Possibly, “your face at another age”(147) is suggesting to return to the mental state of a child, asking four hundred questions a day without a second thought.  Also, “another age”(147) may be stating that the ability to vocalize ideas will come in time as some sort of futuristic evolution. Nevertheless, Adrienne Rich is encouraging people to eventually shine the light on their ideas, rather than hide them.

2 thoughts on “Thinking About Silence”

  1. If you look at Rich’s poem “Cartographies of Silence” you can see she addresses silence differently. Until the sixth stanza Rich relates silence to power. Rich writes silence is “the blueprint to life” (140), suggesting silence lets us plan who we are. She agrees with what you have discussed in stanza 6 when she says “the silence I wanted to break in you”. Rich writes about two forms of silence. I believe based off of what you said and this poem that Rich addresses silence as a powerful tool that you can utilize in order to create true conversation.

  2. nilhsa,

    i had a lot of the same thoughts when reading this stanza. The metaphor, at first thought, seems very clear that its referring to her desire for others to voice their unrefined thoughts. However i would go on to say that Rich is not generally referring to all people, but specifically to women. In our society, a woman’s thoughts have much larger obstacles to overcome in order to be heard and taken seriously. Therefore women have been conditioned to heavily filter their actions and speech, to such a degree that it has become normalized in our culture. I also agree with nilhsa’s thought about the line, “ It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces,/even your face at another age.”(147) My initial thought was that perhaps as we get older we will hopefully acquire the ability to lessen our personal filters, but I find the reference to children’s inherent lack of understanding of societal pressures, more fitting.

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