Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

During my last week of graduate school, I printed copies of my thesis to gift to friends. I wanted the poems in the hands of people who were generous without hesitation; friends who brought over homemade tortilla soup during exams, who left supportive greeting cards in my mailbox, folks who simply said an encouraging word when I had doubts about completing my master’s program.

I met one such friend at a local brewery. It was our last night seeing each other. We’d worked together at an organic health food store in Eugene. After an hour of chitchat, before we were about to depart, I pulled out of my bag a bound copy of my poems. He pushed back his dreads, took it in his hands and said, “You wrote this?” I said, “Yeah, I did.” In a tone of genuine amazement, he replied “I just didn’t know people had this many thoughts.” I was suddenly self-conscious. I heard his remark as pity for me.

“Does anything settle your mind?” he asked. I said, “Yes . . . writing . . . momentarily.” I took a last swig of my beer, stood up, and laughingly said, “You don’t have to read it.” He joked, “It might take a few years. But I’ll get to it.”

I walked away wondering if writing was an affliction. I had never considered the question: does a restless mind given to language suggest a restless spirit, ill at ease with the world around me? Is it unnatural to want to write a book? Is it a project of the ego or worse, evidence of a mercurial and unstable mind? For a second, I thought silence superior and considered enrolling in a silent retreat to amend my belief that the world needed my words.

Of course, true to form, my new state lasted only a week, and then I was back at my desk writing poems provoked by these very questions. But, since then, I’ve allowed myself to intentionally go quiet, too.

Today’s poem illustrates returning to listening as a ventilation of the soul, sublimating the ego in the interest of interacting with more than just our thoughts.

What Good Is Silence
by Phuong T. Vuong

On the day I lose my voice
I wade through a park’s
clover, grass, and milkweed

I watch a woman tap the spot
to where her dog gallops
and releases his ball

Listen as bike entourage circles
the Lake’s perimeter,
a ganging up of joy, a charge
of beats unleashed from speakers

I see in my quiet:
exploded bass blown, exposed 
pomegranate arils, a bougainvillea
fuchsia cloud, inverted bomb blast,
infrared ray split, another’s speech
spilled from throat

In excess, struggle
to observe sanctity

Silent, I am
apocrypha made sacred

Wordless, I am
not blasted blaspheme

Speak through hips moving
in city—fleshed out and godly;
my eyes touch
others, stoke fires in raised brows

I hear clearer than ever, my prayer
honest as quiet as breath

This meditation to speak
wind-up to strike
more accurate than ever—
yet some will ask
what good is silence?

“What Good Is Silence” by Phuong T. Vuong from A PLUCKED ZITHER © 2023 Phuong T. Vuong. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Red Hen Press.