The Silence Of Men

The Silence Of Men CoverPublisher: Cavan­Kerry Press
Price: $16.00
For­mat: Paper
ISBN: 1−56859−163−2
To buy: UPNE, Indie­Bound, Powell’s, Ama­zon, Bar­nes & Noble

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We all know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I have to tell you about the cover of The Silence Of Men, which was pain­ted by Cavan­Kerry Press’ desig­ner, Peter Cusack. I’d sent Peter a whole slew of ima­ges as pos­si­ble cover art, some of them con­nec­ted quite expli­citly to the ideas of men and silence, some more focu­sed on silence and some that were so abs­tract that they would only have wor­ked to the degree that the vie­wer was willing to con­nect the book’s title to the shape(s) and flow and mood of the image. Meanwhile, as part of pre­pa­ring to design the book, Peter had asked me to send him some poems so he could get a sense of what the book was about. When he was done rea­ding them, in res­ponse, he pain­ted the pic­ture that became the book’s cover. When he sent me a digi­tal ver­sion of the image, I was imme­dia­tely struck by how pro­foundly “right” it felt: that it should be flo­wers repre­sen­ting that which silen­ces the man in the pic­ture by cove­ring his mouth and that the flo­wers them­sel­ves, the silence of their exis­tence, could also be read as that which is coming out of the man’s mouth. When I saw the actual pain­ting, at a rea­ding given by another Cavan­Kerry Press author, I was, for a moment, speech­less. The colors were so much richer than the digi­tal copy, the (simul­ta­neously dis­tur­bing and opti­mis­tic) beauty of the image so much more pre­sent — I had no choice. I bought the pain­ting, and I am very proud to say that it now hangs on my living room wall.

Sam­ple Poems

Here are some of the poems I gave Peter to read.

The Silence Of Men

A man I’ve never drea­med before walks
into my apart­ment and sits in the green
chair where I do my wri­ting. He carries
in his left hand a large erect penis
which he pla­ces silently on the floor.
The pha­llus begins to waltz to music
I can­not hear, its scro­tum a skirt;
its tes­tic­les, legs cut off at the knees.

I want to know why this dis­fi­gu­red
manhood has been brought to me. I look up,
but my guest is gone. His organ, defla­ting
in short spasms like an old man coughing,
spreads itself in a pool of sha­llow blood.
The silence bet­ween us is the silence of men.

Light

In the dream, my life was smoke: I couldn’t breathe.
So I ran, unw­rap­ping myself down the beach
till your skin, the ocean, lap­ped at my knees.
I dove in. Your voice was a current,
a melody gathe­ring words to itself
for us to sing, and we sang them,
and they swir­led around us, iri­des­cent fish
brin­ging light to the world you were for me;

and then I was water, a river
washing the night from your flesh,
and I crad­led your body rising in me
till you were clean, glo­wing,
and when you sur­fa­ced, glis­te­ning,
there was not an inch of you I didn’t cling to.

Who Knew?

I’m wai­ting for the tears that didn’t come
when they put him in the ground, that wouldn’t come
among the family friends and rela­ti­ves
who later came to mourn. The small talk
they made of other deaths to make their own
small­ness less appa­rent made my brother’s dying
sma­ller by the hour. One woman,
lost in a cousin’s can­cer, tur­ned to me
as someone handy to do what her grief
would not allow her to do, Richard, swee­tie,
be a dear, bring me an ash­tray. After lunch,
I reci­ted kad­dish. The same woman
took my arm, That was won­der­ful!
Who knew you had such Jewish in you?

Dear Yoon

When you went home that night to tell your hus­band
and he took the swing that mis­sed your jaw
and brui­sed your arm, I wan­ted you enough
to see that blue-black Rorschach on your flesh
as a gift. Now, behind me on this train,
a mother worries in your lan­guage
that her daugh­ter is too old to find a man.
Ji-in must be six­teen by now, too young
for you to worry yet, and yet the voice
your sis­ter screa­med in when she saw my face—
Go! Be a round-eyed’s whore! May your daugh­ter
do the same!—will not have been for­got­ten.
Even all these years later your neigh­bors
will won­der which of them would dare
give their son to such a woman’s offspring.

Last night, the small com­mo­tion of my spi­lled drink
tur­ned a woman’s face I thought was yours
to where I was sit­ting. If it had been you,
what would I have said?
Remem­ber the beach in Pusan?
We laughed like newly­weds, took these pic­tu­res
I joked our chil­dren would some­day call trea­su­res.
I’m loo­king at the one of you on the rock we clim­bed
to escape the sta­res that brought back
your talk of sui­cide. You grab­bed my hand,
led me to the edge and we stood gazing out
over the water, a future
wai­ting for us to cross it.
Yoon,
you’ll read this only if you read my book.
These lines must end. I have to let you go.

What The Revie­wers Have To Say

Newman’s first book-length collec­tion, The Silence of Men, explo­res the space bet­ween old-fashioned male silence and con­tem­po­rary male sound and pre­sents poems that force us to rethink the place of poetry in mas­cu­li­nity studies.

–Fred Gar­daphe, Men and Masculinities

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This is a fairly hard volume to read. Not because the poetry is bad: it has moments of epiphany and insight many wri­ters would love to pro­duce, but because the mate­rials and the­mes are so close to the bone.

–William G. Doty, Jour­nal of Men, Mas­cu­li­ni­ties and Spirituality

❖

Super­fi­cially The Silence of Men appears to be a guy book, which is not to imply that women will be tur­ned away. This is not a guy book in the dis­dain­ful way a guy would say a film is a chick flick, but a book that openly por­trays what a man feels and expe­rien­ces […] Ulti­ma­tely New­man shows me a side of ten­der­ness and empathy. I am drawn into what this man and many men have gone through to sur­vive in this culture.

–Eve Rif­kah, Diner

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In many ways, The Silence of Men can be read as a narra­tive. The rea­der follows the speaker’s jour­ney through a com­pli­ca­ted past and unders­tands both how these events have sha­ped him and how he refu­ses to let these events con­trol his adult deci­sions. In this debut book, the voice the rea­der hears is a strong one, sin­ging, des­pite the hurts and wrongs of the past, an opti­mis­tic song in which “the earth [can be] trans­for­med to a tent where we all break bread” (“Poem from the Bar­nes & Noble Café”). If the ending of silence is also the begin­ning of new sto­ries, I look for­ward to rea­ding future books from New­man, to hea­ring what he’ll sing about next.

–Amy Uns­worth, The Pedes­tal

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Richard Jef­frey Newman’s work is excep­tio­nal. He expres­ses human emo­tions in ways pro­found, power­ful, and poig­nant. In The Silence of Men, he tries “to give the dream a shape this page will hold.” How he gives life to those words taking shape on the page is an enligh­te­ning journey.

Lau­rel John­son, New Works Review

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Hugo Schwy­zer, in his res­ponse to The Silence Of Men, sin­gled out the poem “Coi­tus Inte­rrup­tus” and how it explo­res “the ways in which racist rea­lity both impin­ges upon — and lea­ves untouched — white existence.”

❖

THE SILENCE OF MEN is Richard Jef­frey Newman’s first book of poems. I know few peo­ple go to books­to­res or Ama­zon to find new poets but he’s worth the effort. The publisher is Cavan­Kerry Press (2006). New­man […] is NOT a silent man, he wri­tes with great depth and insight and ope­ness about the things most men never talk about [.] Poem after poem asto­nishes me.

June Calen­dar, Calen­dar Pages

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Just as I finished rea­ding The Silence of Men (Cavan­Kerry Press, 2006) a new friend con­fi­ded that he’d lear­ned a sec­ret about his father — a sec­ret that shook the foun­da­tion on which he’d built his life. He said he wan­ted to write about it, but didn’t know where to start. I recom­men­ded [The Silence Of Men].… As I was pre­pa­ring to post this piece, I recei­ved an e-mail from [that] friend. He had this to say: “I LOVE IT!…his abi­lity to com­mu­ni­cate fee­lings is pre­ci­sely what I’m hoping to be able to do. It’s great reading.”

Shawn Pit­tard, “An Open Let­ter to Richard Jef­frey New­man” on The Great Ame­ri­can Pinup

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