Sharks' Teeth by Kay Ryan

Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or a fin can still
be sensed in parks.

Analysis

Unlike some of Ryan's other poems, this one starts quite suddenly, with the first line setting the tone for the whole poem. “Everything contains some silence” is a proposition the speaker immediately challenges and resolves. How does “noise” contain silence? The rest of the first stanza answers this question by arguing that the "rest" in noise is what gives it its "zest", being the nature of music: restful, but full of life.  Ryan describes the "rest" as "shark-tooth shaped fragments": each "rest" in music is a sudden ascent followed by a sudden descent, with an edge. Just like a shark's tooth. 

In the second stanza, Ryan shifts to "remnants of a time" this is an important shift because "remnants" are not the same as "fragments" because "remnants" can be whole. However, a remnant has left us, it is a monument of the past that does not function in the present. Ryan calls these "remnants" "compact and dangerous as a shark" but this is misleading, it is not simply the "remnant" that is dangerous, but rather the time from which it came and the characteristics of that time that are the danger because they can sneak up on us and be as damaging as a shark is to us in the ocean if we are not alert and watchful. Ryan does not specify the time period she is addressing, she often leaves these details blank so that the reader may make the poem more personal by filling in the blank themselves. In the last few lines, Ryan tells us what to watch for, "a bit of tail" or a glimpse of "a fin". This tells us to look at history both far away - the tail (the end) and the more recent history - the fin (the middle). Finally, Ryan tells us where to be watchful, "sensed in parks". Parks are pubic and places for people to gather, and this is what we need to be watchful of.