A Soft, Stunned Silence
Sound’s absence is lauded as powerful in the musing poetry collection A Soft, Stunned Silence.
David Moore’s contemplative poetry collection A Soft, Stunned Silence is about the relationships between sounds and shadows.
Logical and dialectic, these poems investigate the opposing abstractions of silence versus shadow and silence versus sound, sometimes personifying such notions. In the end, their philosophical investigations work to assert the supremacy of silence over shadow and sound, even morphing toward symbolism for romantic love. Silence, for example, dances with sound in “a slow minuet / a lover’s round.” As the book progresses, such romantic reconciliations grow more complex and less certain. Silence is even disheartening: A “nightingale” lover absents herself, exposing logic’s flaws as well as the speaker’s vulnerability.
The free-verse entries are consistent in form as well as content. Sonic resonance, including the repetition of words, is used to enhance the meanings of some poems, as with an entry that honors Leonard Cohen’s repetition, white space, and unusual typography: “Your trace? ,,, unwinding / Bard Bard Bard / Your shadow at my feet,” for instance, evokes the essence of a bell tolling. Subtle rhyming elsewhere has pleasing effects, as with “The gentle rush / of waves awash.”
Written in short lines that cascade down the page, the poems flow well. Some enjambment occurs and enhances their visual impact. However, not all of the formatting has clear purpose; some of it works against the thematic emphases of the involved material, proving interruptive rather than enlightening. Awkward phrases and misspellings also appear and prove distracting.
Each poem is accompanied by photographs of shadows in locations including Greece, Mexico, and India that suggest reverence for ancient spiritual traditions. These pairings emphasize the book’s overarching metaphysical vision of silence floating through the atmosphere while shadows are connected to the earth. Silence is also paired with sounds in poems about how the two forces compete and sometimes complete each other.
While serenity and discontent are at war throughout the book, silence is its default state—in particular, the calm, enduring silence that precedes and follows birth and death. Sound, in comparison, is rendered but “the parenthesis / which marks one silence / from the next.” Still, such disembodied, philosophical inquiries insist upon human fallibility, holding attention through to the book’s ending, which treats silence as more of an aspirational state than a natural one.
A Soft, Stunned Silence is an enlightening poetry and photography collection about the impacts of sound on human nature, even (or most of all) in its absence.
Reviewed by
Michele Sharpe
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
