Silence and Silences

Literature, nature, human rights, and much else are haphazardly touched upon in this labyrinthine meditation from poet and essayist Wilde-Menozzi (Mother Tongue). She presents a free-associative ramble over topics that are more or less connected to the concept of silence, broadly and blurrily construed: “Putting that dimension of silence into words is a contradiction: it is the silence beyond all silences, the dark and light of transcendence.” Recurring motifs include her own partial deafness; the herons poised silently in rivers near her home in Parma, Italy, and New York, where she teaches; the suffering that Nigerian refugees reveal in her writing classes; the deaths of family and friends; the addictive speed and ephemerality of internet communications; the exaltation of language by Dante and the corruption of language by Donald Trump. Together these musings feel like a 400-page prose poem that unfolds through covert allusion and lyrical evocation rather than argument and analysis. There are aesthetic riches to be found, including a recreation of Wisconsin snowstorms in Wilde-Menozzi’s childhood, with their “marvelous sensation of quiet and disappearance and the delight of new shapes, cars as rounded bunkers, and drifts like sea waves rising.” More often, unfortunately, the result is muddled pensées that make much of this a baffling slog. There’s a lot said, but little communicated. (Dec.)