Week 35 and Other Things

Well, this week saw me earning $2 from writing, so my total for the year has risen to . . . $820.88. At this rate, a one thousand dollar-year seems a long way off.

Casperian Books just released Sound & Noise by Curtis Smith. I ordered it. You should think about it, too: http://www.casperianbooks.com/catalog/1-934081-04-3.html I may be wrong, but I get the sense that people will be talking about this one. It was getting some good pre-publishing buzz.

I just finished read a book of poems. Lightning and Ashes is by John Guzlowski, and it details his parents' experiences as slave laborers for the Nazis. It also contains poems about how they eventually became displaced persons and then came to America. What a powerful collection. The poems are stark and frank, and the language and style match the theme perfectly. Here's just a sample:


My Father Tells a Story

My friend Jashu was an artist in Wilno
before the war. He would paint pictures
of young women in dresses made of roses
and yellow flowers no one had ever seen.

In the camp he would push a stick
through the dust and sketch your face
give you eyes like Charlie Chaplin
or a funny stomach like Oliver Hardy.

Jashu told me of the women he knew
before the war, of making love in blue rooms
after a dessert of marzipani on silver plates,
then going into the dark, wet park

And making love again in the half shelter
of a band shell or kiosk. Near the end
he told me he had the French disease,
and when I said I didn't understand

he pointed down to his thing there
and asked me what he should do.
He was a good friend, and I looked him
in the eye and said, "Go to the Elbe

And drown yourself." He laughed and went
to Stefan Czernak who said, "Go to the Germans
And tell them what you did." The Germans asked,
"Who was the woman you made love to?"

He told them, and they beat her with clubs
and killed her and they beat him too,
and castrated him, and killed him.

What a powerful poem! The whole thing leaves the reader waiting for something at the end. Something what? Something poetic? Uplifting? Something more than what we got? Well, what we got is it. This is Nazi Germany. This is how poems end in Nazi Germany. That ending gets me again and again. It's the stark truth. You can't write about such a thing "poetically". It is what it is, and yet it is poetic because it captures the thing so perfectly.



I read this book because John Guzlowski will be coming to the tri-cities for a reading on Wednesday, November 12th. He'll be reading in the day at Delta College and in the evening at the United Church of Christ of Midland. I'll get more specific on the times as the events draw closer.