Poem During the Plague: Poem 10

Zvi A. Sesling

Zvi A. Sesling is the Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA. He has published numerous poems and flash fiction. He edits Muddy River Poetry Review, He is author of War Zones, The Lynching of Leo Frank, Fire Tongue and King of the Jungle and three chapbooks Simple Game, Baseball Poems, Love Poems From Hell and Across Stones of Bad Dreams.  He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize four times and his books have been nominated for national and local awards. He lives Brookline, MA with his wife Susan J. Dechter. 

The Plague Descended 

The house is now prison 

Spouse the warden 

two meals a day to conserve 

television is the outside world 

order goods from supermarket 

no sports to watch 

or fish to catch 

family and religion are virtual 

never heard of Zoom before the plague 

really don’t miss much except freedom 

At The End Of The War by DeWitt Clinton

At The End Of The War

by DeWitt Clinton

© 2018 DeWitt Clinton

Kelsay Books

Aldrich Press

ISBN 978-1—947465-92-3

Softbound, 111 pages, No Price Given

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

The Holocaust is 80 years in the past and survivors have decreased in large numbers. But deniers of that terrible period have increasingly  spread their message  to countries throughout the world.

In this toxic atmosphere DeWitt Clinton’s poem, “Touring the Holocaust” is more than a reminder; it is a tribute to the past and those who died.

Following are excerpts from this poem “Opening Day, The United States Holocaust Museum.” While the poem is five plus pages long, I present excerpts depicting the prejudice and bigotry unleashed against the Jews.

We cannot move any further

unless we step

into a care

a brown cattle car

swept incredibly clean

where all of us must

unload nothing bad will happen

to us here

though we cannot stay

too long in the car

that would bring the guards

everyone believes

we will be safe

it isn’t as if

we are really there.

And the people on the tour years later see what the camp was like. The truth may frighten. The truth may reveal. Those in the present do not die like those who died in the death camps.

What is it like for a town and its people to be wiped off the face of the earth? Clinton captures this tragedy of the many small shtetls which existed, in some cases for hundreds of years, before being exterminated by the German soldiers and their accomplices.

Dazed, disoriented, we step

into a shtetl sky high

a room of old photos

of everyone who ever

lived in that place

this fire place high as a smokestack

those at the very top

lift first into ash.

Finally we approach

the crematorium

a model of long courteous lines

little people with

little faces

guards and shepherds

keeping everyone

civil, in line.

We watch them go inside

watch them undress

the inappropriateness

of men and women

long beards

pubic hair

a wildness beyond even G-d

Clinton has brought readers through the Holocaust Museum to the reality of the actual brutality as it was perpetrated in the 1930s and 1940s. His poems portray what the Jews experienced. He shows a sensitivity to biblical literature as well as Judaism. Each poem reveals the horror of the war as well as the cruelty and viciousness of the Nazis.

“Reading the Tao at Auschwitz” is a 28 part sequence which begins thus:

I

In the beginning we saw Nothing

From Nothing came Something

Something made All of us

Turn into ash only to

Float onto those just Arrived

or on farmers, nearby,

Turning us into Soil and Food

The irony of death, of ashes of humans becoming food is not missed either by Clinton or his readers. How Nothing becomes Something is the tragedy – of which there are many -- of World War II and the Holocaust.

The third part portrays another tragedy, the treating of humans like cows or sheep led to slaughter:

III

Imagine, go ahead imagine

Undressing a place

Where signs direct

Everyone to Remember your number

To be efficient, your number is used again

In Part X the helplessness of the Jews is laid out in twenty-three lines. Many of the things Jewish prisoners needed are listed-- food and help the most prominent.

X

The way never acts yet nothing is left undone.

--I, xxxvii

We needed soup

We needed clothes

We needed penicillin

We needed cots

We needed mothers

We needed water

We needed more soup

We needed flannels

We needed air

We needed guns

We needed prayer

We needed Benji

We needed Marla

We needed all we ever knew

We needed law

We needed time

We needed home

We needed stew

We needed health

We needed Moses

We needed bombs

We needed meals

We needed You

Clinton’s book is a masterpiece of understanding and presenting the Holocaust in real terms.  He refutes the deniers for their anti-Semitic beliefs and their nefarious political purposes.

As Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, I am hoping that he taught his students about the Holocaust during his long career and that they have retained his lessons and passed them forward. That is what keeps the truth ahead of the deniers.

At The End Of The War is a book of poetry to be read by everyone.

______________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Author, War Zones (Nixes Mate Books)

Author, The Lynching of Leo Frank (Big Table Publishing)

Manhattan, An Archaeology by Eileen R. Tabios

Manhattan, An Archaeology 

by Eileen R. Tabios  

Copyright 2017 by Eileen R. Tabios  

Paloma Press 

Tucson, AZ 

ISBN 978-1-365-87509-0 

Softbound, 111 pages + notes & acknowledgements $40 (before discount) 

Review by Zvi A. Sesling 

Since the 1990s-- when I first encountered  Eileen Tabios’s poetry , she has continually taken readers on a different journey of creativity with each book.  Ms. Tabios is one of the Philippines' great gifts to the United States.  Her poetry is innovative, definitely creative and never repetitive.   

Manhattan: An Archaeology is  in six parts:  The Artifacts, Post-Nostalgia, Big City Cante Intermedio, Winter on Wall Street (A Novella-in-Verse), Vacation: Skiing Away From Manhattan, Clyfford Still Studies and 2016 Diptych.  For our edification she adds Selected Notes to Poems. 

My personal favorite is Chapter Nine in the Novella called “The Firm”  

Bellowing like a bull in heat  

was encouraged 

But certain things just weren’t done –  

we learned them in our first year: 

Do not dress better than your boss  

Do not get drunker than your boss 

Come to work neat and pressed 

like a fine pair of sheets 

But if your tie was not undone 

sleeves rolled up 

shirt tail hanging out of your pants 

by 9 a.m. 

you weren’t working hard enough 

Never wear Hermes ties 

leave those to lawyers and golfers 

Never wear cheap shoes 

When you get a new pair 

polish them 20 times 

before debuting them 

Your shoes should not look bought 

but like you inherited them 

from a rich uncle 

Never get a cheap haircut 

A bad apartment at a good address 

is greater than 

a fabulous apartment at a bad address 

If your boss gives you a Mont Blanc pen 

at the end of a salary negotiation 

you were taken to the cleaners 

Never insult a client – no matter 

how stupid or rude, they have 

the required $20 million to open 

an account at The Firm 

If one of your colleagues is fired 

never speak to him again: 

failure is transmittable 

Never show excessive zeal 

Never never never 

Always always always 

* 

A wealthy father 

can exist 

A wealthy uncle? Never 

The wealthy never  

underestimate  

lineage 

One feels compelled to read Ms. Tabios not only for the humor, the entertainment, and the talent, but for the lessons.  And there are usually many from which you can pick .In “The Firm” there are lessons like the one I  taught myself-- when my first public relations boss said: To be a good PR man you need to have three straight martinis and not feel a thing. 

To which I replied:  If I had three straight martinis I wouldn’t feel a thing. 

But as Tabios often writes, I digress.   Back to the review. 

  

With Tabios the reader is always headed to new ground, new thought,a certain joy, an enlightenment, if you will, that free the readers from the dullness they have read before.  Here are some examples:

On Conceiving Silent Pleas(e) 

--after PH-635, Only on canvas (1967) 

I believe I am reminding you that no one owns space, though you can cup it 

within a folded palm and feel the same power that ignites a short, fat man  

looking at his thin, tall wife—diamonds studding the platinum manacles around 

her scented neck and wrists— 

Park City, Utah Tabios unleashes these six lines to open a five page poem: 

1. 

Together, we have only imagined the sky 

a trapdoor with a lost key bow seducing eagles 

whose darting eyes never reveal affection— 

Once, yours did (the setting the back seat of a cab) 

which made me gather fallen petals 

from roses gifted by an unnamed chambermaid— 

Finally this one: 

Letter From Paris to New York 

--November 2016 

When offered Versailles 

I shook my head 

Once was enough for me 

No need to gorge 

on Foie gras, etcetera 

though many do 

There are many other lines in Tabios’s poetry that intrigue – there always are.  Her language is light years ahead of many poets from countries around the world, yet remains accessible and exciting. 

This book is well worth the time you spend reading it. 

__________________________________________ 

Zvi A. Sesling 

Author: The Lynching of Leo Frank (Big Table Co., 2017), Love Poems From Hell (Flutter Press, 2017), Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva, 2016), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011), King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010). 

Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review, Bagel Bards Anthologies Nos. 7, 8 and #12. 

Publisher, Muddy River Books