Echoes of Tattered Tongues
Memory Unfolded
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner 2017 Benjamin Franklin GOLD AWARD for POETRY. Winner 2017 MONTAIGNE MEDAL for most thought-provoking books.
"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, intimate—Guzlowski 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 fragments—poems, prose and prose poems, frozen moments of time, sometimes dreamlike and surreal, other times realistic and graphic—Guzlowski 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Guzlowski (Lightning and Ashes), a Polish-American writer born in a German refugee camp after WWII, recounts the horrible atrocities enacted upon his parents during the war in these straightforward, gut-wrenching narrative lyric poems. These snapshots of Nazi German rule illustrate that hardship didn't end with German surrender; the aftershocks radiated through successive generations. Guzlowski's simple language highlights the violence without offering any comment or consolation: "She finds her mother/ a bullet in her throat/ her sister's severed breasts/ in the dust by her feet/ the dead baby/ still in its blanket." The words fail to convey the sense of loss, but the tortured nature of the content is clear; each word means more in the sparse, unadorned language Guzlowski employs. In "What My Father Knows About Killing," he writes, "My father knows men and animals/ do not die in the same way." Similar sentiment appears in "What the War Taught Her": "My mother learned that sex is bad,/ Men are worthless, it is always cold/ And there is never enough to eat." Poems of this nature are not meant to alleviate the pain, but to help keep a record of it; to serve as a reminder that silence is not a crime, but forgetting is.
