I view writing a poem as an act of resistance to some part of the self that has been kept secret or silent. The idea of a daily discipline only delays me. Without urgency or vulnerability, my writing begins to sound like self-imitation. Now I view silence as a volcanic pressure that eventually erupts. I feed my silent self by paying reverent attention to the silent world around me. In Martin Buber’s book I and Thou (T. & T. Clark, 1937), translated from the original German into English by Ronald Gregor Smith, Buber asks us to treat every other as a thou rather than an it. Instead of treating a tree as an object or image: “The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it—only in a different way.”
When I have writer’s block, I turn to a tree or lamp or piece of lint—an object which I would otherwise ignore. Then I eavesdrop. At first it feels ridiculous, but eventually the object confronts me with its own voice. Next time you find yourself frustrated by your own silence, try having a conversation with an object. Wait until you hear even just one word. How will you respond? What will you ask? What do you need to tell in turn? This practice relieves me of the pressure to invent language. Without that pressure, a strange new language may fill the silence that had stopped you.
—Elizabeth Metzger, author of The Going Is Forever (Milkweed Editions, 2026)
Photo credit: Yvette Roman