I just ordered my copy….

From the Iliad to John Balaban (a friend), from the Vietnam war. [None that I see from the Bush wars.] Published on the 100th anniversary of the start of WW I, when war poetry took on a decided anti-war cast, it looks to be a book worth absorbing over the next four years — and perhaps reapplying the lessons from 100 years ago to today, eerily looking like a mirror image, cracking differently….

Here is one of Balaban’s poems, “After Our War,” included in the anthology.

After our war, the dismembered bits
— all those pierced eyes, ear slivers, jaw splinters,
gouged lips, odd tibias, skin flaps, and toes —
came squinting, wobbling, jabbering back.
The genitals, of course, were the most bizarre,
inching along roads like glowworms and slugs.
The living wanted them back but good as new.
The dead, of course, had no use for them.
And the ghosts, the tens of thousands of abandoned souls
who had appeared like swamp fog in the city streets,
on the evening altars, and on doorsills of cratered homes,
also had no use for the scraps and bits
because, in their opinion, they looked good without them.
Since all things naturally return to their source,
these snags and tatters arrived, with immigrant uncertainty,
in the United States. It was almost home.
So, now, one can sometimes see a friend or a famous man talking
with an extra pair of lips glued and yammering on his cheek,
and this is why handshakes are often unpleasant,
why it is better, sometimes, not to look another in the eye,
why, at your daughter’s breast thickens a hard keloidal scar.
After the war, with such Cheshire cats grinning in our trees,
will the ancient tales still tell us new truths?
Will the myriad world surrender new metaphor?
After our war, how will love speak?
Read more at http://www.blackcatpoems.com/b/after_our_war.html#J37UephY8KabK8LV.99

 

I ordered my copy from Alibris, a consortium of independent books sellers.  You can view the table of contents at Amazon — but patronize them only in desperation. As you know, when you feed monsters, monsters will feed on you.  Powells, in Portland, OR, is also independent and has a new Google book scanner in place [see Google Preview below the book cover icon], so you can see the TOC there, and purchase if so moved…