Said Not Said by Fred Marchant (review)

Poet Fred Marchant delivers a remarkable combination of confoundedness and compassion in his new four-section poetry collection, Said Not Said. The poems pry into the deep complications of living and some of the most painful positions the living endure—or don’t endure. Since there is no cure for being on earth, as Samuel Becket notes in the epigraph, we must use our heads. Using our heads comes, however, with its own limitations, as Marchant shows. What, really, do we know—particularly about the pain of others and the suffering of people in other places? To what extent can we comprehend other cultures and perspectives—particularly in the onslaught of chaos? Let’s say we acknowledge our lack of knowledge and look to God for answers, will we get any, as the poem Psalm asks? And, on the off-chance that, inspired by nature or some chthonic voice, we have an answer, will we be able to find the words to articulate it?

Marchant has never been one to shy away from human suffering. In each section of Said Not Said, the poet shows exquisite sensitivity to the pain of others, reaching from far away to deep down for subject matter in this fifth collection. The sections revolve around international hotspots and war zones, as well as holy sites and interior landscapes. Often leaning into autobiography, the poems use nature and elemental items as references for a world that anguish has made foreign and abstract. Marchant engages a vernacular of warfare frequently, even in poems discussing his sister’s fight with mental illness. The poems battle to compose an expression of his sister’s life and suffering: “The Name of the Painting” draws a parallel of madness stealing the present day by describing Titian’s rendition of the rape of Europa. Jupiter takes away Europa—the modern world—leaving her terrified family behind; in fact, everyone is terrified. Marchant’s parallel asserts that each day we fight for our sanity and our place in the modern world.

In the absence of answers, sanity, or peace, the poet wonders if we can find a way to adapt, like a person would if he had a fishbone stuck in his throat but had to go on regardless. What if a person lived on a very dangerous street, how would he walk? What if only olive trees made sense or the air was nearly too hot to breathe? Adaptation, slow and awkward, does not present a perfect answer for mortal suffering, no better than using our heads, anyway. Although “out of many hearts” comes one soul to do the job of cleaning up after war, the job then becomes keeping guard for peace. Marchant, the first Marine to receive an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector while on active duty, may not have exactly come to peace with coming home from the war for peace of mind, as the narrator receives a “quitter’s rose” instead of a medal when he returns home from the war alive: even at home, war haunts the speaker.

In fact, war often frames the speaker’s perspective. The poems incorporate the words of war for tools, places, emotions, situations from battle destruction to the language of Dante’s hell. Equally present, the poems evoke the sacred. And, at times, the speaker pauses when words express “really little more than nothing.” In certain poems, the poet faces the world and wonders “if there is anything to say, more or less.” Sometimes, as in the story of the woman taken in adultery referenced in the title poem, what is not said has as much value as what is said, a difficult lesson for the poet, for whom life is about saying something. Sometimes, words end up as chalk dust, blowing away with everything learned in a day or believed in a lifetime. Sometimes, words fly up and away like birds or wash off like water. Sometimes, as Marchant acknowledges “In the Rapids,” we can “just…not say.”

Not one to give up, the poet carries on...