Full Description
"A searing memoir." Shelf Awareness "Powerful...Deserves attention and high regard." Kevin Stein, Poet Laureate of Illinois "Devastating, one-of-a-kind collection." Foreword Reviews "Gut-wrenching narrative lyric poems." Publishers Weekly "Taut...beautifully realized." World Literature Today In this major tour de force, John Guzlowski traces the arc of one of the millions of immigrant families of America, in this case, survivors of the maelstrom of World War II. Watch the book trailer at www.polww2.com/EchoesTrailer Raw, eloquent, nuanced, intimateGuzlowski illuminates the many faces of war, the toll it takes on innocent civilians, and the ways in which the trauma echoes down through generations. His narrative structure mirrors the fractured dislocation experienced by war refugees. Through a haunting collage of jagged fragmentspoems, prose and prose poems, frozen moments of time, sometimes dreamlike and surreal, other times realistic and graphicGuzlowski weaves a powerful story with impacts at levels both obvious and subtle. The result is a deeper, more visceral understanding than could have been achieved through descriptive narrative alone.
This is the story of Guzlowski's family: his mother and father, survivors of the war, taken as slave laborers by the Germans; his sister and himself, born soon after the war in Displaced Persons camps in Germany; the family's first days in America, and later their neighbors in America, some dysfunctional and lost, some mean, some caring and kind; and the relationships between and among them all. As Guzlowski unfolds the story backwards through time, he seduces us into taking the journey with him. Along the way, the transformative power of the creative process becomes apparent. Guzlowski's writing helps him uncouple from the trauma of the past, and at the same time provides a pathway for acceptance and reconciliation with his parents. Ultimately, then, this is a story of healing. Because America is a land of immigrants with myriad and varied pasts, Guzlowski's story may reflect pieces of your own family's history, though details will of course differ. Something similar may also be the hidden story of one of your friends, or a colleague at work, or the sales clerk or waiter who serves you one day...or even, like Guzlowski, your professor of English literature.
Contents
FOREWORD byCharles Ades Fishman xv PREFACE WhereI'm Coming From xvii My People xx BOOK I.HALF A CENTURY LATER Dreams of Unhurried Memories 2 The Wooden Trunk 3 *** My Parents Retire to Arizona 9 A Good Life 10 Windows Without Scars 11 What My Father Believed 12 My Mother's Hair 14 My Father's Mother Asks Him to Forgetthe War 15 My Mother Talks About the War 16 I. My Mother Reads My Poem Cattle Train to Magdeburg" 16 II. How Her Mother and Sister Died 17 III. The Beets 18 IV. Liberation 20 V.What the War Taught Her 22 WhyMy Mother Stayed with My Father 23 AGarden in the Desert 24 My Mother's Optimism 25 At the End: My Father 26 I. My Father Dying 26 II. Pigeons 27 III.A Sonnet About Dying 28 At the End: My Mother 29 I. My Mother Prays for Death 29 II. How Can I Ask My Mother 30 III. Dying in a Blue Room in Arizona 31 Souls Migrating in the Rain 32 BOOK II. REFUGEES Refugees 36 The Happy Times and Places 37 First Snow 39 *** Mother Tells Me How She Met My Father 41 The Day I Was Born in the Refugee Camp 42 Lessons 44 My Father's First Day in America 46 Promised Land 47 I. Coming to America, 1951 47 II. The Farms of Buffalo, New York 48 III. Winter in America 49 Looking for Work in America 50 I. What My Father Brought With Him 50 II. I Dream of My Father as He Was When He First Came Here Looking forWork 51 III. His First Job in America 52 Polish Triangle, Chicago 53 All the Cliches about Poverty are True 54 I. Poor Adas II. Sweet Little BirdsIII. The Storm I. Missing Pieces II. Dumb Polacks III. Kitchen Polish IV. My Grandparents Landscape with Dead Horses, 1939 96 September 1, 1939: The Day World WarII Began 97 Fear (A Poem Based on a Story byTadeusz Borowski) 99 *** My Mother Before the War 101 My Father Before the War 102 There Were No Miracles 104 The German Soldiers 105 I. German Soldiers Moving East 105 II. German Soldiers Come to a Polish Village 106 III. German Soldiers Stealing from the Dead 107 IV. What the German Soldiers Left Behind 108 My Mother Was 19 110 Cattle Train to Magdeburg 112 My Father Talks about the Boxcars 113 Grief 114 A Cross of Polish Wood 115 My Mother's First Winter in Germany 116 Sisters in the Labor Camps 117 Hunger in the Labor Camps 118 I. What My Father Ate 118 II. What a Starving Man Has 119 III. Among Sleeping Strangers 120 IV. The Germans Who Owned Them 122 A Story My Mother Heard in the SlaveLabor Camp 123 The Work My Father Did in Germany 124 A Life Story 125 My Father Tells a Story 126 Brief History of a Mother's Sorrow 127 My Father's Teeth 128 The Forests of Katyn 129 Third Winter of War: Buchenwald 130 My Mother's Dreams in Wartime 142 What My Father Knows About Killing 143 Today the Gypsies Are Burning 144 Temptation in the Desert 145 Photos of Dead Mothers 146 The Bombing of Magdeburg 147 Pieta in a Bombed Church, Magdeburg 148 His Dead Eye 150 Worthless 151 War and Peace 152 In the Spring the War Ended 153 TheStory Behind the Poems 155 InHeaven 159 APPENDIX "RedPoppies on Monte Cassino" 161 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 163 165 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 167 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
