-Laurel Benjamin, FLOWERS ON A TRAIN
This is a story told in flashes, as though by the pulsing lights of an ambulance, of bombs and rockets exploding, of interrupted memories. Each flash, each isolated memory matters because distance lets us supply the connections. This is the voice of someone on the outside who is searching for a way to understand. Each poem documents an absence - of information, of a person or creature, of common language, of comprehension - and each hole implies the weave of the context. Each poem about each memory is a visceral blow, as it should be. I could say that Malinowski has worked through these events so that you don't have to, but that would not be true. Malinowski has worked through them because we need to know why and how war matters.
-Karen Greenbaum-Maya, The Book of Knots and Their Untying
"The taste of blood and dirt
caked sweat of war
putting layers upon layers on
forgetting is too easy."
Yet you may find forgetting these poems is not so easy. The collection is a song of conflict and survival that will echo long after you've turned the last page.
-Gabby Gilliam, No Ocean Spit Me Out
Related Subjects
Poetry