“I Know When To Keep Quiet” by Dawn Leas (Reviewed by Nina Bahadur)
Dawn Leas’ debut collection, I Know When to Keep Quiet, is a carefully-worded exploration of childhood, adolescence and the search for home. The poems span Texas, New Orleans, and Pennsylvania, featuring old friends and lovers, and the constant feeling of never coming to rest.
The collection is held together by the motif of car travel — specifically, the action of clutching a stick-shift that Leas learned from watching her father as she found herself “Trapped / In a parent’s pipe dream moving from state / to state.” (Red Rabbit Running). Readers walk through the neighborhoods of Leas’ youth, overhear her parents’ arguments in the front seat of the car, and make us wonder what it means to be a daughter, a mother, and a twin.
The specific details of Leas’ early life is what makes her poems so compelling. Leas lets her readers see her praying “to catch / the right Green Ridge boy” (Pretzel Park), having Sunday meals with her Italian grandmother, and experiencing day after day of being “the new girl” at school: “On display, like storefront mannequins / my sister and I stand together” (Another School, 1982).
The poems about New Orleans are perhaps the most evocative, reflecting a child’s interactions with colorful New Orleans culture. In “Fat Tuesday”, Leas remembers her experiences at the famous New Orleans Mardi Gras Parade. Fascinated by the characters and masks, a young Leas is overwhelmed by the constant movement and widespread spirit of excess: “I drop to my knees, / comb for loot, / drape my neck / in purple, green, yellow, / stuff my pockets” (Fat Tuesday). Another poem deals with her adjustment to New Orleanian culture through food: “this last / supper my first lesson / in southern ways” (Assimilation).
At places, Leas’ collection seems mapped more in geography than in emotional depth, and is more family-centric than individually-oriented. The rare poems that do address her own experiences with love are thrilling, showing a different side of Leas as a writer: “This is the way I fall back, / yes, dark water rolling the dock, yes / the weight of drowning on my chest.” (Slipping)
The collection, which is fashioned from Leas’ M.F.A. thesis of the same name, is a series of observations through the voice of a child who watches and is being watched. As Leas continues her work as a poet, I look forward to seeing more poems that utilize her own voice in the present, looking both inwards and forwards.
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Nina Bahadur is a Londoner and an Anthropology student. She likes naps, literary fiction, and re-tweeting things from @feministhulk. She also writes poetry, which can be found at www.ninabahadur.com.
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