Silences

by Martha Ronk

Within the visual arts of painting and photography, Martha Ronk finds an undeniable presence silence. This character slips into pauses, hides between images, and expertly evades the grasp of language. Ronk shows us that what is hidden just off screen in these images might just be the force that gives them power. The poems in Silences seek possibilities of how to form language from a phenomenon that so earnestly resists it. Rather than coax silence out of hiding, Ronk’s poems respond to its mysterious presence through questions and conjecture.

These poems endeavor to give a much-deserved voice to silence, addressing the power of what is not seen. While silence remains perpetually out of reach, Ronk invites us to follow the language that creeps up to its edges. The poems in this collection form an inquiry that moves through the presence of silence and reveals insights into the character of the visual art in which it lives.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2019

Reviews

[Moon Captain · Rating 2 out of 5]

So sometimes I go to the library and just grab poetry books and have a sit and see if they strike my fancy. I read about half of this book. Knowing nothing about Martha, I guessed, accurately, that her poetry is is largely just fooling around with form. This is not the sort of poetry I like at all, but at least I learned somethting. You can always learn something from any book you try, even if you learn only that you don't like the book.

[John Madera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martha Ronk's Silences is an extraordinary book, its superbly constructed sinuous lines, its many lyrical Stevensian single-length sentence poems, revealing a profound quality of mind, of attentiveness to persons and places and things and ideas, moreover to the lacunae, interludes, and suspensions, the hush and hesitancies, the "breathing space" between and among, surrounding and suffusing all of the above.

[Clay Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent poetry chapbook.