PS 4: this is not a poem, it’s just how I paced myself

One of the greater parts of my silence piece is that we have invited the Poetry Club and a 4th grade class from PS 4, the Duke Ellington School on 160th Street, kids with an interest in writing to write a poem collectively, to learn it, and perform it silently on the 30th and then when the opera singer hits the high note, do a loud fun version.

So on Tuesday I went up with Christine Hou who’s worked with the kids before with visual art and I got to make a tiny presentation. I had to think of how to discuss this issue with kids. Here’s what they got:

When I was a kid in school
silence was bad
not necessarily
often it was a command
SILENCE!
I remember enjoying
listening to the room
when we were working
rustling paper
and sneezes
coughs
whispering
sounds of heat coming up in the winter
sounds outside in spring
there was no such thing as silence.
Friends who make films
have told me how they gather some
after each scene they shoot
for the purpose of editing

later on in catholic school
just before easter we had to pick an hour
and go to church
be guarding the thing
actually the exposed Christ
I felt like a loser
I chose four o’clock
and sat there for an hour
I felt like a loser because nobody else did it
but it was my first private silence
one I owned and I liked it
I use silence in my poems
all the time
I’ll write a thought:
“Even my cat hates me.”
and then cars honk so I write that down
“cars honk”
Also when you do a poetry reading
sometimes it’s quiet
sometimes it’s not
when it’s not
you can either
walk away mad
read against it & be mad
or read like it’s your band
you’re reading with all the sounds in the room
In this project
the collection of silence
everything is our band
and it’s like we turned
the volume down on us
so everything else can
play and walk around
watching us perform silently

I’d just also like to tell you how this happened
I was invited to do something
this summer
on the outdoor plaza up at the museum the audbon plaza
which reminds me of birds
and the museum people brought me inside
they said do what you want
so there were all these
collections inside
so I wanted to have a
collection outside
They talked about difficulties
with sound
because when you perform outside
the whole band of
everything else is playing
and it’s hard to hear
you
I decided to make it easy
instead of fighting the city
to let it play
and be performing our poems
privately until they end.