poem – Dr JoAnn LoSavio

Airmail: A Story of War in Poems by Kathleen Patrick

This is a collection of poems about the experience of American soldiers off to war in Vietnam. It is about the family that they left behind in the United States. It is about the loss and gains of war, patriotism, the inevitable criss-crossing of cultures and people across oceans.

It has been a long time since I have read poetry, and especially since I have reviewed any. Poetry is harder, so much harder to assess. Or rather, its assessment — if that is the right word — is so much more subjective (in one sense) or so much more technical (in another sense).

I’ll start with this: The subject matter of this collection of poems makes an impression on me in ways particular to my personal heritage and profession. I am from Southeast Asia, though not from Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, the places where the Vietnam War (or the American War, as it is also called in Southeast Asia) took place. I am also a historian of the twentieth century, of Southeast Asian history, of decolonization, and transnational connections between Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The way I have read these poems — and the way in which I review them — is inevitably filtered through these twin lenses.

These poems are powerful, both as evidence of historical perspectives and subjectively, as pathways of emotion. These poems open up avenues for understanding and seeing the experience of war, beyond the political, beyond the combat, beyond the filter of news.

I especially enjoyed “Voices, A Collage” which spans years and tells us a soldier’s letters home. This is poem about regrets, but it is also about how a family remains connected in spite of the distance, in spite of the pain of war.

“Telegram”, a much shorter poem, was especially poignant; its truncated form permits the reader to come to their own organic feelings and expectations. There is an implication of regret or guilt; an odd thing to say, but I really enjoyed that about “Telegram.”

“Robert M. in the Doorway” struck me as being about the PTSD of war, and for that reason, it was also a favorite. Again, a short poem, but powerful and thought-provoking. “Picking Rock” and “Don’t Forget the Women” brought to light the consequences of war that are often left unsaid; the soldier’s experience is not the only one. These poems made that clear, and sadly so.

What can I say about these poems? They made me feel, and that is — to me — the only thing a poem should aspire to.

Translated by Aron Aji

The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales by Ferit Edgü

Sparse writing delivers more feeling sometimes, more than a hill of words. The Wounded Age defends that “less is more” adage more than adequately. Edgü is master of the cut, clipped prose; it is this brevity of language that paints a dark history of Turkish war and tragedy. The sense of nothingness is poignant here, deliberate, necessary to understand the effect of war on its subjects.

This collection of stories is marked by an unusual delivery via poetry. The stories unfold in lyric format; this does not mask the pain of ethnic refugees and the suffering of war that is its subject, but in fact highlights it and makes it more powerful. It is as if the Edgü or the reader would only be able to handle such pain if it were framed in poetry; the reality of war and of those mowed down in its path needs to be formatted in this way in order for the reader to see the war for its intimate effects.

The stories and poems themselves evoke a sense of fracture in Turkish life; there is a disjointedness that is purposeful, performative. These are not historical fictions; these are emotive accounts of the Turkish past.

Overall, a beautiful and dark landscape of Edgü’s world.