The Poetics of Silence: (Re)memory through Poetry of the Mexican Diaspora

Abstract

A close reading of poems by Eduardo Corral, Laurie Ann Guerrero and Lorna Dee Cervantes to identify distinct possibilities for silences in the poetry of the Mexican diaspora: adopting, enforcing, and, ultimately, straddling both. Silence is unique to the language of poetry—as relative to a story, a poem is silent because it does not have the words a story does. Poetry, then, functions as (re)memory, a vehicle moving towards creation within the menacing silence of the (re)inscription of the border.