Review: Silent Muse Poetry by Ariele Tee

The timeless theme of love gained, appreciated, and lost is explored in Silent Muse Poetry: A Tale of Heartbreak and Becoming, the eclectic debut collection by poet Ariele Tee.

Tee’s book is divided in five parts. An introductory piece in Volume 1, “The Buildup,” states the issue clearly: “This love ran through my veins, ignited flames and drove me crazy.” Here, the poet focuses on the blindness of the early stages of love. She refuses to see the lover’s flaws, enumerating the virtues and vowing her eternal devotion. She wants to be the one and only (“9-5 and weekend”), – the one who can make flowers grow out of her lover’s flaws, who will hold her lover’s heart forever. But even at this stage, there are “screams in the distance,” leading to “The Release,” in which, despite the necessary pangs of love, “a girl can dream, can’t she?”

The relationship is mulled through silence and writer’s block. Tee begins to see life beyond pain in “The Calm,” comparing love to rain, a productive substance that empowers new growth. The fantasy of perfect love still persists, even as she is learning to beautify the scars engendered by loss. She expresses a new perspective in “The Remains,” wisely observing that the only people she needs are “the ones that come looking for me.” This sense of changed identity is strengthened in the final volume, “The God in Me,” in which eternal truth emerges, forgetting will play a role, and more positives will be grasped.

Tee perhaps summarizes best her own self-perception when she suggests that poets speak “to the broken.” Her works reach out on an viscerally emotional level, often very directly so, as she addresses her readers, assuring them that she wrote this collection for them. The feelings expressed will be familiar to anyone who has found someone who seemed like the one and only, wrestled with ego and inevitable disparities of personality, and later, had to pick up the pieces and move on. In examining such partnerships, Tee often presents as self-critical, tormented with guilt and regrets, so this collection isn’t just about a poet pointing the finger outward.

At times she assigns mutual blame with the estranged partner, as in the short, empathic poem, “Toxic”:

Trying to put together the pieces in my head
Where you fit
And I can’t
Because you never did

Tee’s book is formatted with a plain but symbolic marking: individual works are decorated by a small, heart-shaped leaf at the beginning and end of each. The poems are freely constructed, with a minimum of rhyme and punctuation. The progression of insights and personal growth shown through the five volumes reveals her maturity as well as her poetic gifts. In addition to evoking empathy, her work is intelligent and often as thought-provoking as it is emotive.

One of the offerings in the final volume offers proof of her deeper delving into universal meaning: “All creativity is powered by love.” This powerful combination of heart and head enfolded in poetic imagery will doubtless garner Tee an enthusiastic following.