Marianne Moore's Poem"Silence" and Donald Trump

Admittedly, A Weird Pairing

I was struck dumb a few weeks ago, though not surprised, when I read that before the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, American generals had to “stay ahead” of Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts, which were signaling too much about the attacks to the Iranians. In short, in his need to feel like a strongman and flex his very undernourished muscles, he just couldn’t shut up. This lack of verbal self-control seems to be a flaw shared with many MAGA males, who constantly talk over everyone at the speed of toddlers high on their deadbeat parents’ cocaine stash, having thought it to be powdered sugar.

Just listen to Stephen Miller poutingly taunt and interrupt journalists, or MAGA influencers who think wearing tight T-shirts and yelling like lunatics makes them “masculine.”

I’m talking about verbal bullying here, but also a kind of compulsive, cringe-worthy talking we see daily with Trump, as when he recently blurted out his pleasure at the Liberian President’s good English, not knowing English in the official language of Liberia. To make matters worse, he kept returning to the “compliment.”

Someone who engages in compulsive talking, which is different from talking a lot, is considered to have what is technically called logorrhea. It’s an impairment that sometimes can be funny, if it’s not meant to be insulting.

My father was a compulsive talker. I remember him driving his friends and me to Canada one hot summer day to play golf, chattering so much that he even distracted himself, as the car wandered from lane to lane, followed by angry car horns. Finally, one friend said, “Jack, shut the fuck up and drive,” but my father just laughed and kept talking. Then another friend said, “Jesus, Jack, put a sock in it,” to which my father had the same response.

And yet these guys loved my dad; they knew he would have done anything for them.

But Trump’s logorrhea, as in the case of Iran, can start a war or get soldiers killed, and his “compliment” of the Liberian President betrayed yet again his long-time racism. I know of no black man who has ever thought that being called “well-spoken” is a compliment.

And all of this made me think of Marianne Moore’s wonderful poem, “Silence”—a poem which I used to teach every year.

Silence

My father used to say,
“Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow’s grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self-reliant like the cat—
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth—
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”
Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.”
Inns are not residences.

As an imagistic poem, “Silence” certainly works overtime in the way silence is brought home again and again with the all the images suggesting it: “Longfellow’s grave” (what could be quieter than a grave); “glass flowers” (flowers that, though beautiful, don’t noisily grow); and of course the images of a mouse in the cat’s mouth. I love the way in which all these images, along with their connotations, reinforce each other.

Many critics have pointed out that the idea of “silence” in the poem also suggests that “superiority” often comes from the confidence suggested by restraint and the ability to be alone—the latter another kind of silence.

These analyses often treat the poem as a cautionary tale or lesson, and although that point could be argued, I think it misses the irony of the last two lines: “Nor was he insincere in saying, ‘Make my house your inn.’ /Inns are not residences.”

The last line, spoken by the daughter, not the father, at least to me, suggests that a certain loss of feeling can also come with the kind of “superiority” the father espouses. It follows the male dictum that feelings not expressed are more sacred for their silence. It’s not a far leap from that to make a daughter feel unwelcomed at home by telling her to think of his home as an “inn.”

And so silence is both virtue and vice in the poem, which is as it should be, just as a poem should never be “lesson.” When that happens a poem loses all of the messy complexity of life.

Unfortunately, so much of contemporary poetry is chatty dogmatism written by poets who are always trying to proselytize, in attempt to own a number of self-serving narratives, hoping they might become legendary poet/philosophers.

So take that!

---

You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com

His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems

His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories

Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss