The poems in this anthology were selected for the unifying theme of silence. In every poem, the presence or absence of silence is integral to the topic or mood: it influences the language, imagery, and mental dynamics of each piece. Many of the pieces focus on death or internal reflection, topics that lend themselves to language and silent activity. However, there is an extraordinary range of attitudes, images, language and tone regarding these topics and their relational silence. These poems speak to the multifaceted nature of silence, demonstrating that it is more than just the absence of sound. It can be a state of being, a source of comfort, a source of anxiety, a mental “space,” a sense of faith, or a means of escape. This anthology highlights the range of human experience and perception through the writers' variety and quantity of what we have to say about a seemingly similar and attenuated concept like silence. The first poem in the anthology is "The Clouded Morning" by Jones Very. This poem creates silence through the interaction of tone and scene setting. The use of words such as stillness, dull, muted, subdued, and drowned all describe the muted sense of sound and movement in the poem. They combine to create the image of a heavily foggy morning, where the clouds are so thick that they form a blanket in the atmosphere, simulating night and also quieting the “din of the city” and “the shrill, piercing voice of the rooster.” The speaker seems to appreciate the silence created by the scene. In describing the sounds that the fog is muffling, the poem uses negative adjectives. The city is described as noisy, vaguely hateful and chaotic. The rooster is described as shrill and piercing stating that it is...... center of the card...... in reality the poem implies that the grandmother lived a more traditional lifestyle by leaving hints such as "áo dai", a customary form of dress and that the grandmother was buried with her agricultural tools. Finally, the silence of the poem is broken by the thoughts that the speaker is drawn to: those of the pain and suffering of the Vietnam War. Grandma lost many family members to the violence of war. The volume of grief is evoked through the graphic and intimate descriptions of this loss. Finally, the poem ends with a feeling that ultimately defeats silence. The speaker, returning to the grave is able to reconnect with the grandmother through the resemblance to the speaker's mother and “[lighting] the joss sticks (incense) and [planting] them]. These connections between family and culture prevail over the silence created by the distance of death and time.