nolemdaer's review against another edition
Excellent but too troubling for me to really resonate with it
conorsweetman's review
3.0
"You unwrap your dark bread
and share with me the coffee
sloshing into your gloves.
Telegraph posts chop the winter fields
into white blocks, in each window
the crude painting of a small farm."
and share with me the coffee
sloshing into your gloves.
Telegraph posts chop the winter fields
into white blocks, in each window
the crude painting of a small farm."
raloveridge's review
5.0
Fantastic. How is it that it's taken me this long to read this? Stunning, absolutely.
dlberglund's review
4.0
Though this collection has some notoriety as being all about the lead up to the bloody struggle in El Salvador in the late 1970s, only the first section is explicitly about El Salvador. The whole collection is infused with melancholy, longing and regret. War and suffering across the continents come to me over and over in the text and between the lines. Some is very personal, invokes the names and dates of specific people, while others are universal. But here we are almost 40 years later, and her ending words are haunting me.
There is a cyclone fence between/ ourselves and the slaughter and behind it/ we hover in a calm protected world like/ netted fish, exactly like netted fish./ It is either the beginning or the end/ of the world, and the choice is ourselves/ or nothing.
There is a cyclone fence between/ ourselves and the slaughter and behind it/ we hover in a calm protected world like/ netted fish, exactly like netted fish./ It is either the beginning or the end/ of the world, and the choice is ourselves/ or nothing.
raluca_p's review
4.0
“all things human take time,
time which the damned never have, time for life
to repair at least the worst of its wounds;
it took time to wake, time for horror
to incite revolt, time for the recovery
of lucidity and will.
(...) In the mass graves, a woman’s hand
caged in the ribs of her child
a single stone in Spain beneath olives,
in Germany the silent windy fields,
in the Soviet Union where the snow
is scarred with wire, in Salvador
where the blood will never soak
into the ground, everywhere and always
go after that which is lost.
There is a cyclone fence between
ouselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing. ”
*
“You will fight
and fighting, you will die. I will live
and living cry out until my voice is gone
to its hollow of earth, where with our
hands and by the lives we have chosen
we will dig deeep into our deaths.
I have done all that I could do.
Link hands, link arms with me
in the next of lives everafter,
where we will not know each other
or ourselves, where we will be a various
darkness among ideas that amounted
to nothing, among men who amounted
to nothing, with a belief that became
but small light
in the breadth of time where we began
among each other, where we lived
in the hour farthest from God.”
time which the damned never have, time for life
to repair at least the worst of its wounds;
it took time to wake, time for horror
to incite revolt, time for the recovery
of lucidity and will.
(...) In the mass graves, a woman’s hand
caged in the ribs of her child
a single stone in Spain beneath olives,
in Germany the silent windy fields,
in the Soviet Union where the snow
is scarred with wire, in Salvador
where the blood will never soak
into the ground, everywhere and always
go after that which is lost.
There is a cyclone fence between
ouselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing. ”
*
“You will fight
and fighting, you will die. I will live
and living cry out until my voice is gone
to its hollow of earth, where with our
hands and by the lives we have chosen
we will dig deeep into our deaths.
I have done all that I could do.
Link hands, link arms with me
in the next of lives everafter,
where we will not know each other
or ourselves, where we will be a various
darkness among ideas that amounted
to nothing, among men who amounted
to nothing, with a belief that became
but small light
in the breadth of time where we began
among each other, where we lived
in the hour farthest from God.”
sjgochenour's review
2.0
The powerful imagery of this book wasn't really enough to take the bad taste out of my mouth from reading poem after poem that gave dignity and insistence to the voice of a disconnected observer at the expense of the people and events depicted. This book seemed very arrogant in the importance it gave to the "storyteller" or the "one who speaks for those without voices" (an attitude if not a phraseology on nearly every page.) I found the poems that dealt with the U.S. more compelling.
spacestationtrustfund's review
3.0
THE COLONELWhat you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
May 1978
mattshervheim's review
5.0
Reading this after reading Forché' What You Have Heard Is True, I expected the poems about El Salvador to be powerful, and they were — and knowing the background story deepened the experience immensely. But I was just as enthralled by the personal poems as well, mostly tales of shared solitude in cities around the world, haunted by violence and longing, set against a backdrop of blue winter.
ms_castalian's review
5.0
I tried not to write about Carolyn Forche this week, but on account of not being able to finish another book, I find myself here, having to write about Forche.
One of the reasons a critic might reasonably avoid writing about Forche is that her poems take time to develop – not just on the page, but in the mind. Their center of gravity is always beyond the instant, and as a result, the reader is left with the impression that any talk of the poems themselves must reach beyond the words from which the poems are made. Take, for example, the ostensible prose poem “The Colonel,” which details the speaker’s encounter with a military official whose collusion in El Salvador’s violent regime slowly becomes more evident. The poem proceeds by mollifying the reader with detail: “His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar… There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the / cushion beside him” (16). The addition of the word “cushion” here suggests: perhaps the pistol is normal, can be forgiven, can be seen as an everyday object. Later, domestic words are used to describe the house’s barriers: “Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to / scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace.” Scooping, lace, later detached human ears described as “dried peach halves,” these are all artifacts of Forche’s gift for describing the ultra-violent using the language of the everyday. Violence, she seems to argue, is neither visible nor invisible; it is readily apparent only in the mundane details of our lives, woven seamlessly into the objects we use to signal our innocence.
It is for this reason that writing about Forche is difficult. The poem itself, for all of its understated, factual qualities (there are no exclamations or wheeling rhapsodies here) seems to present itself as both factually exhaustive and emotionally incomplete. Yes, we recognize that in the midst of “the wind jostling lemons… dogs ticking across the terraces… the cries of those who vanish / might take years to get here” (9, “San Onofre, California”). What we don’t understand is how we could possibly feel both at once: the everyday bliss of a Southern vacation and the haunting thereof. Forche refuses to trade one reality for the other; she also refuses to resolve the contradiction, rather asking that we choose:
“There is a cyclone fence between
ourselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing.” (59, “Ourselves or Nothing”)
So, again, while the poems themselves seem chiefly concerned with the past in different ways (the first section is even dated 1978 – 1980; a later poem addresses “Prague, 1968 – 1978” or “Winter 1969”), the poems take their power from the involvement of the reader, which is precisely what takes time. In this sense, Forche achieves a kind of Brechtian self-reckoning by using the objects of our daily life to put into question our own experiences; unlike Brecht, she is interested in the vehicle not of artificial theatricality, but of uncanny naturalness. The uncanniness is this: the poems indicate no moral line in the world; they cover murder with the same matter-of-factness as they would a passing bird. As a result, we are forced to reckon with our own discomfort, which arises from the lines we have drawn inside ourselves.
One of the reasons a critic might reasonably avoid writing about Forche is that her poems take time to develop – not just on the page, but in the mind. Their center of gravity is always beyond the instant, and as a result, the reader is left with the impression that any talk of the poems themselves must reach beyond the words from which the poems are made. Take, for example, the ostensible prose poem “The Colonel,” which details the speaker’s encounter with a military official whose collusion in El Salvador’s violent regime slowly becomes more evident. The poem proceeds by mollifying the reader with detail: “His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar… There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the / cushion beside him” (16). The addition of the word “cushion” here suggests: perhaps the pistol is normal, can be forgiven, can be seen as an everyday object. Later, domestic words are used to describe the house’s barriers: “Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to / scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace.” Scooping, lace, later detached human ears described as “dried peach halves,” these are all artifacts of Forche’s gift for describing the ultra-violent using the language of the everyday. Violence, she seems to argue, is neither visible nor invisible; it is readily apparent only in the mundane details of our lives, woven seamlessly into the objects we use to signal our innocence.
It is for this reason that writing about Forche is difficult. The poem itself, for all of its understated, factual qualities (there are no exclamations or wheeling rhapsodies here) seems to present itself as both factually exhaustive and emotionally incomplete. Yes, we recognize that in the midst of “the wind jostling lemons… dogs ticking across the terraces… the cries of those who vanish / might take years to get here” (9, “San Onofre, California”). What we don’t understand is how we could possibly feel both at once: the everyday bliss of a Southern vacation and the haunting thereof. Forche refuses to trade one reality for the other; she also refuses to resolve the contradiction, rather asking that we choose:
“There is a cyclone fence between
ourselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing.” (59, “Ourselves or Nothing”)
So, again, while the poems themselves seem chiefly concerned with the past in different ways (the first section is even dated 1978 – 1980; a later poem addresses “Prague, 1968 – 1978” or “Winter 1969”), the poems take their power from the involvement of the reader, which is precisely what takes time. In this sense, Forche achieves a kind of Brechtian self-reckoning by using the objects of our daily life to put into question our own experiences; unlike Brecht, she is interested in the vehicle not of artificial theatricality, but of uncanny naturalness. The uncanniness is this: the poems indicate no moral line in the world; they cover murder with the same matter-of-factness as they would a passing bird. As a result, we are forced to reckon with our own discomfort, which arises from the lines we have drawn inside ourselves.