Hereafter Landscapes by Jody Azzouni

Hereafter Landscapes
by Jody Azzouni
The Poet’s Press
Providence RI
Copyright © 2010 by Jody Azzouni
ISBN: 0-922558-42-6
Softbound, 55 pages, no price indicated

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Always a sci-fi fan, always concerned about the environment, I found myself fascinated by Jody Azzouni’s Hereafter Landscapes. He has visions of the future, the Earth in its final days, the apocalypse of war, the pathos of hunger, nuclear winter – a nightmare of possibilities, a prophet of things to come. Hopefully not in our lifetimes or even in the distant future.

Here are some lines from a few of the poems (I indicate title and lines):

Title: And yet we still wonder where all the fish went
lines: We eat bushmeat now/(with our gloves of blood)

Title: We are trolls
lines: so we live in cans/(like snail)/like hermit crabs

Title: When cardboard will be a step up
lines: (I keep telling you the news no wants to share.)/The extinction wars/(the acid of
ocean; the absence of frog).

Title: When even hurricanes get really big
lines: Shivering our timbers into crunch.
(Can we hear the warnings yet?)

These are just a few of the titles and opening lines of Azzouni’s poetry, more like Nostradamus telling a future we cannot comprehend. Think about it, when Nostradamus wrote 500 years ago only DaVinci could envision airplanes, but no one could foresee atomic bombs, satellites, the weaponry of today, the billions of people, rocket ships tothe edge of the solar system and beyond.

I dare say people can see, even predict, the future Azzouni writes about, but not with his bleak view of mankind, the animal/fish kingdoms and the visions of the horror of the end of not only humanity, but Earth itself.