And Then Something Happened

And then something happened is divided into four main parts. The first, "The Philosopher's Child," is composed of short and long poems that address issues of childhood, memory, and prospective loss. The language of this section, as of the next, "Addenda," is philosophical and poetic. "Addenda" forms an extended reaction to the poet's visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, where she wondered, at one instance, how children might respond to the horrors contained in the museum-space. "Material Lyrics" shifts form, containing prose poems that examine the aftermath of the poet's adoption of her son Sangha from Cambodia (a country devastated by the United States during the Vietnam War) as well as meditations on "the political in the personal" and on the act of writing poetry. The final section, "And then Something Happened," was written in London in autumn, 2002, when war was in the air, but not yet fact. This long poem, composed both of poetry and prose, thinks through the pre-war atmosphere, using language from politics and from the poet's son, his stories and his songs. Written over an extended period the book focusses on the rough and joyous terrain of childhood.