WE SPEAK SILENT
by Hannah Weiner
sweetheart please the torture of meeting someone new is impossible they ask you how old you are and whatyou do for a livingsilent teaching is a disgrace maw really a disgrace can you put this in a paragraph book form should i give more instructions sweetheart like could i meet ya late tonight Hannah Weiner is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose in a publishing career dating from the mid-60’s. From The Code Poems (1968), her work displayed language-like signal flags waved from ships at sea. With the publication of Clairvoyant Journal (1974), she began writing words outside the mind, building the most vivid lexical pantheon in contemporary writing. Her politics in Little Books/ Indians, published by Roof in 1980, confirmed her inside-out project by inscribing the subliminal messages she receives from her characters. We Speak Silent, is Weiner’s most recent work, an opus of the quirky relationships between people and their words. In We Speak Silent, Weiner becomes the vessel for the emotional spectrum of the human comedy. It confirms hers as one of the most unique and fascinating of oeuvres, a continuing adventure in language.