Anny, a strong & even slightly provocative point -- the 'accusation' that
the Wars (any wars) could be forgotten by writers. poets write what they
know & what they want; my generation, so far removed from the horror of
daily lack & fear that touched every country in europe, is not likely to
think about the World Wars in a literary sense, i.e. consider them close
enough to its experience to know how to write about them. but respect is not
difficult, if one has knowledge & compassion. I've taken to singing irish
ballads as a hobby, and with songs like 'Foggy Dew' or 'The Town I Loved So
Well' the idea of idealistic & actual conflict affecting people's lives --
in the context & on the scale of [N.] Ireland -- is evoked & kept alive in a
humanist mind(set); not to mention 'The Green Fields of France' which is in
the exact same vein.
I'm always very affected & even in awe of great war poetry, Owen & Sassoon
for instance; it has a strength and a voice that seems risen from soot,
dust, tin cups & earth that still resounds as if in a church, or living
room. today war is atrocity, political scandal & hypocrisy; I can't write
about shit like that without getting depressed, or without first being
boggled by the fact(oid)s & statistics I'd have to wade through -- and which
can be falsified or exaggerated.
but then, poetry is capable of almost anything; maybe this little discussion
will raise the idea of war in my awareness enough, & for long enough, for
there to be at least one poem in it..
in late 2006 I wrote my only war/political poem to date, it's in the p'etc
archives or at least in my gmail sentbox.
KS
2008/5/30 Anny Ballardini <[log in to unmask]>:
> Do these poems belong to your latest collection, Larissa? I am very
> interested in (I do not know if I can define them in this way) "historical"
> poems, I mean poems that remind us of history. The two world wars have made
> Europe the way we know it. And yet, they are eternally forgotten. Even if I
> tend to agree with what has by now become a saying: that after two world
> wars there is no poetry left, also quoted by Alan Sondheim, and by me
> several times.
> The parents of those who are my age have lived WW 2 when they were already
> adults. How can we justify ourselves and our thoughts if we deny or forget
> its existence?
> Thank you Larissa for these writings. And whenever you feel like, please
> post some more.
>
> On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Larissa Shmailo <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > Kalinivka
> >
> >
> >
> > Kalinivka, Kalinivka: The ground over the mass graves is hard, the soft
> > grass
> > grows. The Ukrainian Guard, boy and girl, make love, happy to be alive.
> In
> > the Ukraine,
> > collectivized, they walked on corpses. And the Germans alone protest,
> the
> > father tells the girl. Siberia, purges. Like
> > the Irish, their parents collaborated eagerly;
> > Hitler fought their masters. Now here, Kalinivka. The mass graves crack
> > with green life. 1941 is forgotten
> > by the summer of '43. She is 19, pregnant soon.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Prymsl
> >
> >
> >
> > By 1943, the ghetto holds the few not deported, living in
> > tunnels, basements, caves, the hiding ones, the ones who know. All the
> > rest to camps in Poland, Germany,
> > or dead. The boy no longer likes the girl, but through her, he got his
> > Kapo
> > job. Even his mother says, marry. Have a child. The female Kapo bears a
> boy
> > through the camps,
> > Prymsl, through the unknown tombs of Poland, the unmarked graves, the
> > walls marked with Jewish blood, the bloody broken nooses, the dark rain.
> > She
> > wants the boy to marry her, he makes excuses, says, the Germans won't
> > permit.
> > That the child will die soon after the war, that she will beat her head
> > upon
> > the grave until it bleeds, that sorrow is unknown. The death of the
> Jewish
> > children is unseen. Poland
> > is always green.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Dora
> >
> >
> >
> > Germany, Harz
> > Mountains. The Germans turn now, now SS. The war is failing. Fewer
> > the slaves to command, the girl, heavy with child, translates, working,
> > starving, carried in rail carts for miles to build the V-2s. A rachitic
> > Jewess
> > cleans the barracks, the boy's eye turns, with pity, with lust; he gives
> > her
> > bread. From Erfurt to the extension camp, Buchenwald's new Dora,
> > Northausen. Here they spare the
> > rope to hang. All are hungry, the Germans too. The Allies bomb the
> > industrial
> > camp. Liberation. Rows of corpses, the eternal rows, line Nordhausen. The
> > Germans are forced to respect the dead. Kalinivka, Pryml, the unseen
> dead,
> > now
> > here in respectful symmetry, no longer piled in heaps, rectangular,
> marked.
> > The
> > flowers grow, the burgers sing, "After every December, there comes a new
> > Spring.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Larissa Shmailo
> >
> >
> > "The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line."
> >
> > -Rollo May
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.myspace.com/larissashmailoexorcism
> >
> > http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld
> >
> > http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > .
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Anny Ballardini
> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
> I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
> star!
>
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