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The Quiet
Anne-Marie Turza's formidable debut collection presents a landscape where anything might appear, out of myth, history, or science: microscopic creatures, the pitcher Satchel Paige, toothed whales, a man on the back of a snow bear.
These poems test the lyric affinity between silence, imagination, and the material world. Put another way, in The Quiet, spatial and temporal distances can be measured in degrees of silence. Turza writes, "Here one can live at any dark system's edge." The Quiet is sinister and aerial.
These poems test the lyric affinity between silence, imagination, and the material world. Put another way, in The Quiet, spatial and temporal distances can be measured in degrees of silence. Turza writes, "Here one can live at any dark system's edge." The Quiet is sinister and aerial.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 8, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 23, 2018
Sparse. Strange. Lovely. Reminds me of the city I dream about in fragments.
Favorites:
-Black Cap Winter
"I believe in ice, in ice only...."
-Anthem for a Small Country
"In my country we admire the ambitious dust:"
-Not Mine, Not Anyone's
"...we will need to be lost
in the drifts
in the drifts..."
Favorites:
-Black Cap Winter
"I believe in ice, in ice only...."
-Anthem for a Small Country
"In my country we admire the ambitious dust:"
-Not Mine, Not Anyone's
"...we will need to be lost
in the drifts
in the drifts..."
January 5, 2023
Check out my review on YouTube! Only ten minutes of your time and you get to find out why this book's a gem: https://youtu.be/p5N1r3xo3d8
June 10, 2014
I can't remember the last time I read a poetry collection without knowing anything about the poet, but after dissolving into THE QUIET, I might make a habit of it. Turza guides us firmly into a world where the sorrows are familiar but the details aren't: "From the industry of sleep, exporting / small, domestic sounds" ("Anthem for a Small Country"). She's certainly not the only contemporary poet writing in what could be called magical realism, but she writes with a logic all her own. As soon as I finished the last line, I wanted to start this book all over again.
May 9, 2014
A really smart and strange debut.
September 10, 2017
I want to start off by saying that my rating is based on my enjoyment of this collection, not on the poet's writing.
I can see that a lot of others here really enjoyed this one but I just couldn't get the same thing out of it. I feel that some of the themes that were explored, like quietness in its different forms, motherhood, and Canadian landscapes, just weren't given enough room to develop in this short collection. Perhaps there were too many disconnected parts here to really come together to add to the reading experience.
I did prefer the more prose-like sections to the poems, which were often quite short. In part because they were so short, these poems felt deliberately confusing. I kept wavering on my rating throughout reading this collection because I'd get annoyed by the poems, then enjoy the brief prose respite, and then it was back to those poems.
Maybe the other reviewers here are at some level of poetry understanding that I haven't achieved but I was not able to connect with most of the poems here, and I really don't think that rereading this collection would help at all with my understanding them any better. Hopefully you have better luck than I did.
I can see that a lot of others here really enjoyed this one but I just couldn't get the same thing out of it. I feel that some of the themes that were explored, like quietness in its different forms, motherhood, and Canadian landscapes, just weren't given enough room to develop in this short collection. Perhaps there were too many disconnected parts here to really come together to add to the reading experience.
I did prefer the more prose-like sections to the poems, which were often quite short. In part because they were so short, these poems felt deliberately confusing. I kept wavering on my rating throughout reading this collection because I'd get annoyed by the poems, then enjoy the brief prose respite, and then it was back to those poems.
Maybe the other reviewers here are at some level of poetry understanding that I haven't achieved but I was not able to connect with most of the poems here, and I really don't think that rereading this collection would help at all with my understanding them any better. Hopefully you have better luck than I did.
April 15, 2020
a slow, mesmerizing collection of poems, fairy tales and marvels in the ordinary and the extraordinary close up world of wings, breath, ice. i'm envious. i wish i could write poems this way.
January 22, 2023
Where have I been? Somehow I've missed Turza's work all these years, but I am catching up. She's an instant favourite.
June 23, 2016
I don't know how to talk about this collection of poems.....
Okay, first, I enjoyed reading this, so much so I read it in one sitting. Did I completely understand what I was reading? No. Does that matter? No, not to me. I felt for the majority of the poems I was being given free reign by the author to make what I wanted out of the poems. They were what I wanted them to be. This is brave I think, because I can imagine a lot of readers rubbishing the poems because they don't understand, because the "message" isn't clear.
Turza's use of magical realism is so subtle and gentle, it is beautiful and atmospheric. These poems makes you pause and think, which is never a bad thing. Turza creates a landscape of wonders that live in the ordinary that we see if only we would look - "within every city is an unseen city", where "rats thread the empty plots between ghost buildings", where characters of Tolstoy come to visit, where beetles have ears beneath their wings and a man rides a polar bear, but is he asleep or dead?
Poems I particularly liked: 'i:iii', 'i:vii', 'Households', 'Here, Boy', 'The Glass Case', 'The Veil' and 'On Sleep'.
If you like the following line, then read this collection: "It is said the potato bug cries like a child."
Okay, first, I enjoyed reading this, so much so I read it in one sitting. Did I completely understand what I was reading? No. Does that matter? No, not to me. I felt for the majority of the poems I was being given free reign by the author to make what I wanted out of the poems. They were what I wanted them to be. This is brave I think, because I can imagine a lot of readers rubbishing the poems because they don't understand, because the "message" isn't clear.
Turza's use of magical realism is so subtle and gentle, it is beautiful and atmospheric. These poems makes you pause and think, which is never a bad thing. Turza creates a landscape of wonders that live in the ordinary that we see if only we would look - "within every city is an unseen city", where "rats thread the empty plots between ghost buildings", where characters of Tolstoy come to visit, where beetles have ears beneath their wings and a man rides a polar bear, but is he asleep or dead?
Poems I particularly liked: 'i:iii', 'i:vii', 'Households', 'Here, Boy', 'The Glass Case', 'The Veil' and 'On Sleep'.
If you like the following line, then read this collection: "It is said the potato bug cries like a child."
October 23, 2014
Turza has captured a universal experience for many people here but many may take those quiet moments for granted. She has collected her thoughts well here, easily having any reader capture the images she has created with their mind’s eye.
http://tinyurl.com/nzugnjp
http://tinyurl.com/nzugnjp
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews