Cartographies of Silence

"[The inner voice to] a poet, a verbal kind of person, is constantly talking to himself, inside of himself, constantly approximating and evaluating and trying to grasp his experience in words." (Denise Levertov; Minnesota Review, 1965).

In "Cartographies of Silence," Adrienne Rich, as the title states, draws a map of an individuals response to, and analysis of, the meaning of silence. She exposes this "meaning" by comparing two different kinds of silence: (1) the silence experienced between two people, and (2) the silence the poet experiences in creating a poem. Both types of silence for Rich are a representation of an individuals choice, "Silence can be a plan / rigorously executed." But a fundemental difference between the two is that one, the poem, "can be torn up," when begun "with a lie," while the same cannot be done with a converstation. These two arenas are for Rich where silence plays.

The "lie" Rich refers to is the fundemental assumption that the words exchanged between two people are understood through a common language. This "lie" perpetuates itself "with its own / false energy" because two people constantly "repeat" the enactment of this assumption. The result of this misunderstanding is silence.

The poet however, in conjunction with Levertov's "inner voice" has the ability to recognize the lie that begins a work, and can "tear it up", or disprove it though the fact of the very "presence," "history," or "form" the poem takes. This occurs in the silence of the poets room.

This line of analysis needs much more space and support for these superficial assertions, but the point Rich, and I, finally comes to is this: the individual finds truth in many ways, but that their discovery comes from a choice they make in silence. One can wish for things to be transperant, as they appear to be in conversation, and there perhaps they will find truth. Adrienne Rich chooses the "dust, / these pale clouds dourly lingering," because in their obscurity and in their silence, "time after time the truth breaks moist and green."