Commentary on "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel

Nothing of mine here, just a couple of things about one of my favorite poems, The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel, that I want to share. The poem is in quotes and italicized, my comments are between the verses. They're not particularly eloquent thoughts, but I really wanted to write them down somewhere.


The Quiet World


"In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more, 
and also to appease the mutes, 
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day."


Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge how much I love just the premise of this poem, and the seemingly arbitrary number chosen. I just like things that don't make sense, I guess? I love seeing real human emotion portrayed in surreal circumstances, but anyway. Also, the "appease the mutes" line is hilarious in a way that I'm not sure it's allowed to be - I'm imagining rallies and protests with signs saying "we do have a voice." (If it wasn't obvious before, I think we can agree now that I'm a terrible person.)


Also, notice how minimalist this poem is. It gets straight to the point. It's almost as if the narrator of the poem is incorporating the restrictions placed on his speech to his writing. The language is concrete, without frilly nonsense, something that I need to work on.


"When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way."


Again, he is using the least amount of words possible to tell the story. Every word is deliberate. It's a poem, but it may as well also be a Wikipedia article, which sets a perfect tone for the last verses, which in comparison to the bland - in a good way! - first two carry so much emotion.


"Late at night, I call my long distance lover, 
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.


When she doesn't respond, 
I know she's used up all her words, 
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe."


I don't really know where to begin with this last part. The style is the same, he hasn't gone too far into romanticism, but there's just so much here that I don't even know what to say. It makes me feel a lot of things. For instance, when the narrator tells his love that he saved the rest of his words for her. He's been so frugal, but when he's talking to her, he just lets everything spill out. Everything else in his life is all business, but he is just so enamored of her that he can't help but waste his words saying that he saved them for her.


When he discovers that she used all of hers, he doesn't become angry - he tells her that he loves her 32 times. You could read this as the narrator accepts that his girlfriend isn't perfect, that while he knows that she forgot, he chooses to forgive her. Or you could read it as desperation, that the narrator is unbearably clingy. I prefer the first one, myself.


But I think that by far, my favorite part of this poem is "thirty-two and a third times." If you count up all of the words, this puts him just one over 167, like he stumbled and had to catch himself. 


I don't even know how to express how much I love that image.