This is
the end of the innocence – Don Henley
Part
of the poet's “job” description is to record historical content –
and Shaindel Beers' The Children's War and Other Poems (copyright 2013 Salt
Publishing), chronicles the loss of innocence through war's violent
variations: internal/external genocide, person against society,
person against themselves.
The
Children's War, as its title promises, provides the reader with a
series of brutal ekphrastic poems that successfully extrapolate the
annihilation of innocence through children's eyes, either through
drawings/paintings made by children who've survived war, or
photographs taken of child refugees. As no one, (at least a normal
person), reacts to a child's pain without a mixture of anger and
discomfort, the first half of The Children's War is almost
impossible to read. Beers throws down the gauntlet: though the
language is spare - like a child's - the feelings, the emotions, the
empathy stirred within the heart of the reader - are not. There is a
primal, raw power in Beers' poems, which can't be circumvented; the
reader is put on the spot as a child's pain and loss take center
stage, as in the poem “After Martija's Watercolor, Croatia”:
There
are things that can happen that you can't draw.
A
soldier ripping off the baby's diaper and slamming him
in tot
he wall because it will be easier if the baby
cannot
cry. Your mother without a head. Your paint splotches.
Green
and blue are peaceful. That was before.
Now,
everything is red. The red mixed with the green
becomes
a sickening brown. The brown that covered
your
thighs when a soldier was done with you.
The second
half of the book “Other Poems,” continue on with the same theme,
but on a more universal scale; loss of innocence through love
betrayed (“Love Poem for the Other Woman'); the discovery that
one's parents are human after all (“Origins”); the loss of
childhood talismans at the hands of bullies (“Ode to Plastic Ball
and Bat”), and the loss of one's passion (“The Last Ballet Class
Before the Operation). Beers narrative tone lightens – somewhat -
in the second half of The Children's War, yet, the poems are
just as compelling, and unforgettable.
Clearly,
The Children's War and Other Poems is NOT for everyone. It's for the
brave reader, one to match the fortitude of a poet like Beers', who
offers, unflinchingly, a reminder that while the world we live in is
an ugly place, there is still great beauty to be found in the depths
of sorrow, honesty, and, in never forgetting our humanity.
The
Children's War and Other Poems, copyright 2013
Shaindel Beers, Salt Publishing, www.saltpublishing.com,
ISBN 978-1-84471-930-3, 67 pages, $15.26
(article
content ©
2013 Marie Lecrivain)
