instead, it is dark
Published on 4. April 2023
133 pages
978-1-63628-066-0 (ISBN)
Description
Following her husband's massive heart attack, Cynthia Hogue began writing poems based on dreams and memories that he, born during WWII in occupied France, had as a child growing up in a time of vast postwar food shortages. Hogue embarked on a quest to discover if there were more such memories in her extended family in France. When asked, family members told her never-before-shared tales of parents who were POWs, collaborators, Resistance fighters, and one most vulnerable-of a hidden child. Hogue spent years researching the lives of civilians during war, work crystallized in her tenth collection of poetry, instead, it is dark. The personal is alchemized as Hogue weaves history and present day in poems that explore how there, here, an individual voice in the stark language of lyric poetry, speaks a complex truth and casts a laser light on violence, resilience, survival, and-the heart of this collection-love.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Content
- Intro
- Front Cover
- Half-Title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Acknowledgments
- Dedication
- Contents
- Author's Note
- 1. war's chorus
- Witness Triptych
- To Hide a Child
- The Daughter
- The Underground Village
- the girl on the bridge
- The Pacifist
- instead, it is dark
- There Never Was a War That Wasn't Inward
- 2. after the war
- after the war there was nothing
- after the war the house lay in ruins
- After the War There Was No Food
- Flight
- Bullets Pock the Limestone Walls
- The Mother
- The Father
- The Opening
- After the War There Was Another War
- 3. responsibility
- birdseye
- memory holds a trace that at times rises into words
- Regarding Others' Pain
- gift
- The Bite of the Apple
- Negative
- Wing (Mary)
- pavane in five parts
- The River Is Wide
- The Simple
- 4. a love story
- "then became"
- The Open
- The Snake
- The Lost Private
- to never complain that the green flecks of leaf offend your view of
- The Way Is Narrow
- The Understanding
- The Loire Valley (Solstice 2015)
- Notes
- Biographical Note
- Back Cover
