Reviews - Quiet | The StoryGraph

102 reviews for:

Quiet

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

4.15 AVERAGE

kaayleigh's review against another edition

3.5

emotional reflective

reviewsbylola's review against another edition

4.5

challenging emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

hilaryreadsbooks's review against another edition

4.0

Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s collection of poems, QUIET, explores the inherent tension of Black interiority, the blurred lines between keeping private and keeping silent. There is an inner dignity, what Kevin Quashie calls the “aesthetic of quiet”—a sort of freedom kept to self that maintains humanity and dignity, an interior Zora Neale Hurston says is “untouched by words” with feelings “untouched by thought.” Colonialism, racism, and all the -isms weave their threads through the interior and the exterior. What is quietude among these violences, these injustices, this exhaustion?

Bulley shows us the full range of what is “quiet.” There is the quiet that is “too quiet,” what seems to be safe, even when this safety is an illusion (from “not quiet as in quiet but”). And even when a mouth opens to speak, how to speak when there seems to never be the quiet for the poet to do so, in the constant noise reminding them that they are never alone (and thus safe)? And even when a mouth opens to speak, when a pen sets down to write, how to not be overshadowed by voices speaking about them without them, silencing them, forever haunting them (from “This poem”)? This is a dangerous quiet.

But when the world gives space, when the poet moves to take space, there is power in quiet. Quiet can be breathing, because “We must stay alive / to our place in the family / of green & breathing things / that use even our sighs / to make sweetness from light” (from “Air”). It is the breath taken between words like speaking, air taken in to “save my breath for singing” (from “Declaration”). And quiet can be loud, where “word begets world,” as it is in the poem “night garden” where stories are planted as seeds, regenerated as hope and love and life down to the future generations.

Bulley writes in a poem: “can you / hear me? can you / see me / now?” Yes, yes. We hear you. We see you. We feel the sound waves of these words through our bodies.

[Thanks to the publisher for the gifted copy]

nathansnook's review against another edition

4.0

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

An incredibly strong collection of poems centering around the black body and its stance in the world, its posture. The way it holds itself up beyond the many ways it is brought down.

Bulley here focuses on sound. Rhythm. Through the noise, diagetic and non-diagetic, she explores the vacuum in which meanings are contained. How those meanings can explode and create structures, forms. Even give nothingness a sound. She can even give silence a rounded feeling, a soul.

"𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢-
𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨."

It's through repeated themes of this silence, the white noise of it, is she able to create a symphony of feelings that involve the beauty of the black experience.

"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢 𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘧 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵." - Zora Neale Hurston.

"𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭, 𝘐 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘵. 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘺, 𝘐 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘦." - Toni Morrison

Then, Bulley not only understands music. No, she doesn't just listen to it, she feels it. She feels it from her bones, lets it course through her until she is music herself.