Within the visual arts of painting and photography, Martha Ronk finds an undeniable presence lurking: silence. This character slips into pauses, hides between images, and expertly evades the grasp of language. Ronk shows us that what is hidden just off screen in these images might just be the force that gives them power. The poems in Silences seek possibilities of how to form language from a phenomenon that so earnestly resists it. Rather than coax silence out of hiding, Ronk’s poems respond to its mysterious presence through questions and conjecture.

These poems endeavor to give a much-deserved voice to silence, addressing the power of what is not seen. While silence remains perpetually out of reach, Ronk invites us to follow the language that creeps up to its edges. The poems in this collection form an inquiry that moves through the presence of silence and reveals insights into the character of the visual art in which it lives.
 

Martha Ronk is a poet who lives in the Los Angeles, California area. She is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Ocular Proof, Transfer of Qualities, and Vertigo.
 

— Craig Morgan Teicher, author of We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress

— Dan Beachy-Quick, author of Of Silence and Song

— 2019 Big Other Book Award for Poetry

— Library Journal