Review by Booklist Review
Can there be poetry about the Holocaust? Isn't this kind of writing an attempt to escape--or to exploit--the suffering of millions? Poet and anthologist Schiff confronts these questions in her eloquent introduction. One answer she finds is that to remain silent is also to lie. Fifty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, great literature about the Holocaust has grown to a flood. As in Langer's landmark anthology Art from the Ashes (1995), the pieces here are of astonishing power. In English and in translation from many languages, more than 80 poets--including Wiesel, Fink, Brecht, Yevtushenko, Auden, and Sachs--give voice to what seems unspeakable. Schiff points out that compelling historical accounts document the facts and numbers, but a poem, like a story, makes us imagine how it felt for one person. These poems are stark and deceptively simple. No one can read them all at once. Each poem leaves you with an indelible memory. In words of one syllable, the Polish poet Rozewicz writes about having to reinvent language after Auschwitz ("this is a man / this is a tree this is bread" ). There's no healing in this tragedy: the last poem, by Primo Levi, is like a shout of rage to us to remember. --Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The power of verse to encompass a topic of mammoth scope and render it into painstakingly personal detail is keenly demonstrated in this absorbing and well thought-out anthology of grief. Sixty-two poets of different ages, citizenships and perspectives make their voices heard. There is Primo Levi on being an Auschwitz survivor; Randall Jarrell speaks in the voice of a death-camp worker. There are poems that have no need for complexity of form or vocabulary. Poets from Eastern and Western Europe, Russia, Israel and the U.S. declare the simple truths that propel the reader through the eight parts of this collection, each section a stage marked with a title of forewarning, beginning with ``Alienation'' and ``Persecution,'' on to ``Lessons'' and, finally, ``God.'' We learn what was left of the bodysmoke, empty shoes, ``a faded plait/ a pigtail with a ribbon''and we uncover what was freed of the poet's mindrage, testimony, legacy. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
