Kendra Grant Malone’s Everything is Quiet

After reading KGM’s Everything is Quiet I instantly thought of a Dylan lyric “Till she sees finally that she’s like all the rest, with her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls”. Malone’s book is unapologetic, she isn’t fishing for sympathy or pity for her actions/observations that readers may not agree with. Malone, a confessional 20-something is just that, there is no pretense, or difficulty, or technical show-boating. And this is what makes this book as good as it is. Malone’s poems, like her, do not try to be something they’re not.

Everything is Quiet is captivating because we get Malone herself, how she places herself in the world, her actions, her guilt, her inquiry. Descartes would call her a ‘thinking thing’ and St. Vincent Millay would be proud. She describes her existence honestly, bare boned and brutal. Malone shows us how horrible it is to exist, and how easy it is to be indifferent towards others, while trying so hard to be good to herself and others. Many people might have problem with Malone’s character, but that’s what makes the book engaging. It is REAL. And by real I mean believable. Even if her poems are complete lies we still want to believe them because we, as readers, know this is generally how people exist in the world around them.

Everything is Quiet is a book for the staunch existentialist, young rebellious women (though who says they have to be young?), or an avid Bukowski fan (who would notice the similarities in style). When I finished this book I couldn’t judge Malone; It’s possible to take a shot at her and say she doesn’t understand or care about the consequences, but she has to. The title of the collection alludes to this. These poems could’ve come out of the solitude she experienced following the experiences behind the poems. These poems are subtly guilt-ridden though they might not always speak to it directly. Everything is Quiet is Kendra Grant Malone coming to terms with herself and the world. This is a book that spits in the face of the technical or intellectual or multicultural or classical or academic or didactic, it is all that it is without trying to be anything else. There needs to be more poets and more books of poems like this, because a poet being honest and relatable is probably the biggest risk one can take.

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