First Generation
Krikor der Hohannesian
Loveland, Ohio: Dos Madres Press, 2020
93 p.
ISBN 9781948017817
Review by David P. Miller
djamangeen gar ooo chagar: an Armenian invocation, the
introduction to storytelling, sits quietly on the cover and title page of First
Generation. “A long time ago there was and there wasn’t.” The almost
insupportable tensions between the death and life of a people and culture, the
reality of genocide and the viciousness of denial, infuse Krikor der
Hohannesian’s first full-length collection of poems. It is dedicated to Armenag
Nazar, “who fled Turkish Armenia in 1910 to escape the Armenian genocide along
with his wife Gulenia and four young children, one of whom was to become my
mother.“ At least in part, these poems
are his attempt “to slide beneath the shield of that which he kept to himself.”
Vivid paintings by the abstract expressionist Garabed Der Hohannesian
(1908-1992), the poet’s father, serve as cover art and as introductions to the
book’s sections (see http://garabedderhohannesian.com/).
Although the poems aren’t in a strictly chronological
sequence, there is movement from the poet’s youth into adulthood and later age.
This is intertwined with the complexities of bringing a partially suppressed
heritage to light, more fully realizing it, and striving to carry it forward.
Part One, The Bearer, begins with “our first naked thrust / into a blue
and eerie world” (“Entrance”). As the child grows, he begins to hear “the
stories… Zeitun, / Musa Dagh—strange sounding names / not easily rolled off the
tongue.” This poem, “Death March: Deir al-Zor,” shows us something of the boy’s
struggles to grip the past, paralleling his difficulties with place names. With
time, his knowledge deepens; he speaks to his grandparents in retrospect:
Now, nene, I understand that
which
as a boy I could not comprehend. [
… ]
It was told that many, knowing
their fate,
threw their babies into the
amniotic waters of
the Euphrates, then joined
prayerful hands
to leap in behind [ … ]
It was told that others,
half-crazed by thirst and hunger,
too paralyzed to resist, submitted
like docile sheep
to the cruelest sexual perversions.
[ … ]
Now, mairig,
the words we could never share.
In this section, der Hohannesian intertwines memories of his
childhood with muted hints that came from his elders. In “The Attic” he finds
“crazed sepias / of austere gentlemen / in over-starched high collars / and
ladies bedecked / in lacy décolletage.” These curiosities reverberate with what
the living both show and hide: “Old Armenian men, hunched / on cane-backed
chairs, / drinking Turkish coffee in dim, / smoke-blue cafes – sotto voce
/ exchanges punctuated / by a knowing nod or /arched eyebrow [ … ] eyes now and
/ then misting over …” (“The Secret”). The loving bond between him and his
grandfather does much to catalyze his emerging consciousness, particularly as
he watches his grandfather write:
a river of discourse
flowing in strange,
squiggly-looking characters
of Armenian script. I was awash
in his serenity, basked in his
aura,
smelled the sweetness of his
presence,
wishing to spend the rest of my
life
in that room. (“The Birth of a
Poet”)
The final poem of the first section recounts the poet’s night
visits to a local cemetery. Although he can’t account for his fascination to
skeptical friends, or even to himself – and although the place isn’t clearly
identified with his ancestry – he can’t help but ask of the stones, “alive with
family sagas,” the question “Who were you?” (“Requiescat in Pace”).
In Part Two, Passages, we see the adult der Hohannesian’s
full-blown awareness of the genocide perpetrated and its continuing resonances
in daily living. Despite an inherited sense of Armenia as “a corpse veiled … a
derelict of history best forgotten,” the poet’s generation took on the burden
of making the history manifest:
To us
fell the task of giving voice to
the ineffable –
to erase the shame that murders the
psyche [ … ]
We scour freighter manifests
for clues, badger Congress for
acknowledgement,
devour memoirs of survivors,
thirsting to know
as our forebears thirsted at
Deir-al-Zor. (“The Stain”)
This is an emotionally contradictory burden to bear,
however, as several poems in this section attest. “Passage to Ararat” witnesses
the struggle of a friend whose father renounced his Armenian heritage, even to
the point of ridicule: “he chose / anglophilia, changed his name, / became an
English dandy [ … ] Worse yet, / the mocking of his forebears as ‘quirky’ / and
besides, ‘the language was impossible.’” The friend’s return to his origins
therefore means acting against his father. In Yerevan he tosses “a yellow rose
/ into the burning oil, your tears / a cascade down your cheeks / like snowmelt
from the slopes / of Ararat.” The poet himself is torn over the possibility of
return, conflicted over what he may claim: “I fear the ghosts. I fear mourning
/ what was never mine, the grief / that belongs not to me but to those / who
gave up their birthright” (“The Cherry Tree”).
And yet grief is certainly his. In “Hear the Wind Blow,”
written in memory of the poet and steelworker John Beecher, der Hohannesian
sets his friend’s fate during the McCarthy era against the hell of polluted
factory towns during that period. The deaths of seventy from the notorious
Donora smog of 1948 – “gagged on smog from steel / and zinc plants, the
inversion of air, / the trapped poisons without a breath / of wind to purge the
valley” – find an echo in the unspecified “accident” which ended Beecher’s work
in the mills. “Old Man John the Melter,” though he “stood tall for steely men …
was blackballed / in the witch hunts of the 1950’s / for not signing a loyalty
oath.” Even more stark, perhaps, is the eruption of heartache chronicled in
“Soul Brother.” After three days of celebrating the life of a deceased friend
with food, drink, and music, the inevitable arrives:
The day-after tears – not the
choked back kind but
full-bore gushing – finally swamped
me
like a rogue wave. I am lost,
marooned on an isle of mourning.
Part Three, The Eternal Flame, opens with a poem that
poses one of the book’s central questions: “What do you do / with the weight of
the unspeakable, / the grief which you could not lift?” (“What Do You Do?”). First
Generation takes a great step toward making this weight both speakable and
spoken, and many of the poems in this final section address the question how to
move forward with the knowledge the poet bears.
“Walking Toward the Edge” grapples with the burden of a lack
all the more devastating for having no particular shape: “How do you measure
silence, / its vacuum of sound, dead air / absent before the storm? / What happened to the Armenians? ” In
reply to someone’s well-meant but inadequate advice – “’You need to grieve,”
she says” – the poet replies that the conditions for grief have been
undermined. The possibility of achieving
grief feels liberating, but the reality is illusory:
How does one grieve absence,
its nothingness? I have walked
toward the edge many times,
excitement in my step [ … ] Yet
a hesitation as I near,
the fear that I will no longer
recognize myself, that I am
staring at death, the paradox
of its comfort.
The devastating realization is that grief is “the cold ash /
from a fire that never burned.”
Nevertheless, der Hohannesian is able to express some of the
marvels of his own life. In “These Hands,” he takes a look at those extremities
so often taken for granted, and how they bear the deep traces of a long life with
guitar playing, holding newborns, planting roses, dancing with speech, and, of
course, writing. He sees “Wrinkles / like wind-blown ripples on desert sand, /
veins the blue-gray of the river, / knurled knuckles, nails ridged like bark …”
– eloquent, elegant marks of aging.
In the book’s final part, we also return to der
Hohannesian’s family, with elegies for his parents. “Saying Goodbye”
concentrates our attention on the final scene in his father’s hospital room.
These last moments are burdened with “the unsaid” that “shall stay
unsaid … It can’t be helped in the few hours left.” The continuing trauma
of genocide is felt even here: he arranges for cremation because “Mother didn’t
believe in funerals – / after all, none of the 1.5 million / dispatched by the
Ottomans were so graced. / She was two years old and had survived.” “Requiem”
begins with the death of his “dear Mother – last of those from home,” and develops
toward an unexpected, perpetual vengeance. The slaughtered Armenians cannot be eradicated,
despite rumors that “Osman’s descendants intend to plow under / all vestiges,
once and for all to silence the screams”:
Anatolian breezes
will forever betray them, bearing
bone dust
and blood motes into every fissure
and crevice
where Armenians once lived.
Where you, Mother, once lived.
“How long does the spirit linger / in dust motes dancing /
in cones of sunlight / before it is all forgotten?” This key question is from
“To the Author of my Epitaph,” the book’s concluding poem. In First
Generation, Krikor der Hohannesian presents us with a deeply vested
inheritance, intertwined not only with sorrow but also with friendships, love,
and the possibility of realizing joy. He takes the essential risk involved in
any bold creative act: asserting his voice against the inevitability of
disappearance we all share. We should pay attention, with gratitude.
