Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Anne Sexton's "The Silence" is a powerful exploration of the profound and often oppressive experience of silence in the creative process. Through vivid and unsettling imagery, the poem delves into the struggles of writing, where words seem inadequate, and silence becomes an almost tangible, menacing force. The poem's speaker grapples with the void that silence represents, turning it into a metaphor for death, alienation, and the futility of expression.

The poem begins with a quote from C. K. Williams: "The more I write, the more the silence seems / to be eating away at me." This sets the stage for the central theme of the poem—the destructive power of silence in the life of a writer. Sexton immediately establishes the setting: a "whitewashed" room, as white and silent as a "rural station house." The choice of this image evokes a sense of sterility and emptiness, a place devoid of life or warmth. The whiteness of the room, which is "whiter than chicken bones / bleaching in the moonlight," suggests something eerie and desolate, further emphasizing the starkness of the silence that pervades the space.

The speaker describes herself as "pure garbage," a harsh self-assessment that reflects her frustration and sense of inadequacy as she tries to fill the room with words. The words that she writes "leak out of it like a miscarriage," a painfully visceral image that conveys a sense of loss and failure. The comparison of writing to a miscarriage underscores the speaker's feeling that her creative efforts are futile, that what she produces is incomplete, unwanted, or dead before it can fully come to life.

As the speaker continues to "zing" words into the air, they return to her "like squash balls," a metaphor that captures the frustrating, repetitive nature of her attempts to break through the silence. Despite her efforts, "there is silence. / Always silence." This silence is not just the absence of sound but a pervasive, consuming presence that the speaker likens to "an enormous baby mouth"—a disturbing image that suggests something both innocent and terrifying, something that devours rather than nourishes.

The silence in the poem is personified as death, "a white bird" that "comes each day with its shock / to sit on my shoulder." This bird pecks at the "black eyes / and the vibrating red muscle / of my mouth," symbolizing the destructive effect that silence has on the speaker's ability to see and speak. The eyes and mouth, essential organs of perception and expression, are attacked by the silence, leaving the speaker vulnerable and incapacitated.

The poem's imagery becomes even more surreal and nightmarish as the speaker describes the "white statue behind me / and white plants / growing like obscene virgins." These white plants, with their "rubbery tongues," are grotesque and unnatural, their silence made all the more disturbing by their apparent lifelessness. The whiteness that pervades the poem is symbolic of death, sterility, and the absence of vitality, contrasting sharply with the few elements of color—namely, the "vibrating red muscle" and the "black eyes" of the speaker.

The speaker's hair, "the one dark" element in the room, has been "burnt in the white fire" and reduced to "just a char." This image suggests that even the speaker's identity, symbolized by her hair, has been consumed by the oppressive whiteness and silence that surrounds her. The "black beads" she wears, described as "twenty eyes heaved up / from the volcano," add a final note of darkness and tension to the poem. These beads, which seem to carry the weight of the earth's molten core, symbolize a primal, volcanic energy that is trapped and contorted, much like the speaker's own creative impulses.

"The Silence" is a poignant meditation on the existential struggles of a writer facing the void of silence, where every attempt to express or create is met with a sense of futility and despair. Anne Sexton uses striking, often disturbing imagery to convey the psychological torment of trying to break through the barriers of silence and the pervasive fear that one's words may never be enough. The poem captures the tension between the desire to create and the paralyzing power of silence, ultimately reflecting the deep, personal conflict that can arise in the pursuit of artistic expression.

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