Winner 2017 Benjamin Franklin GOLD AWARD for POETRY. Winner 2017 MONTAIGNE MEDAL for most thought-provoking books.
"A searing memoir." - Shelf Awareness
"Powerful...Deserves attention and high regard." - Kevin Stein, Poet Laureate of Illinois
"Devastating, one-of-a-kind collection." - Foreword Reviews
"Gut-wrenching narrative lyric poems." - Publishers Weekly
"Taut...beautifully realized." - World Literature Today

In this major tour de force, John Guzlowski traces the arc of one of the millions of immigrant families of America, in this case, survivors of the maelstrom of World War II. Watch the book trailer at www.polww2.com/EchoesTrailer

Raw, eloquent, nuanced, intimate-Guzlowski illuminates the many faces of war, the toll it takes on innocent civilians, and the ways in which the trauma echoes down through generations.

His narrative structure mirrors the fractured dislocation experienced by war refugees. Through a haunting collage of jagged fragments-poems, prose and prose poems, frozen moments of time, sometimes dreamlike and surreal, other times realistic and graphic-Guzlowski weaves a powerful story with impacts at levels both obvious and subtle. The result is a deeper, more visceral understanding than could have been achieved through descriptive narrative alone.

This is the story of Guzlowski's family: his mother and father, survivors of the war, taken as slave laborers by the Germans; his sister and himself, born soon after the war in Displaced Persons camps in Germany; the family's first days in America, and later their neighbors in America, some dysfunctional and lost, some mean, some caring and kind; and the relationships between and among them all.

As Guzlowski unfolds the story backwards through time, he seduces us into taking the journey with him. Along the way, the transformative power of the creative process becomes apparent. Guzlowski's writing helps him uncouple from the trauma of the past, and at the same time provides a pathway for acceptance and reconciliation with his parents.

Ultimately, then, this is a story of healing.

Because America is a land of immigrants with myriad and varied pasts, Guzlowski's story may reflect pieces of your own family's history, though details will of course differ. Something similar may also be the hidden story of one of your friends, or a colleague at work, or the sales clerk or waiter who serves you one day…or even, like Guzlowski, your professor of English literature.

By John Z. Guzlowski - Foreword by Charles Adès Fishman

FOREWORD by Charles Adès Fishman . xv

PREFACE
Where I'm Coming From . xvii
My People . xx

BOOK I. HALF A CENTURY LATER
Dreams of Unhurried Memories . 2
The Wooden Trunk . 3
***
My Parents Retire to Arizona . 9
A Good Life . 10
Windows Without Scars . 11
What My Father Believed . 12
My Mother's Hair . 14
My Father's Mother Asks Him to Forget the War . 15
My Mother Talks About the War . 16
I. My Mother Reads My Poem "Cattle Train to Magdeburg" . 16
II. How Her Mother and Sister Died . 17
III. The Beets . 18
IV. Liberation . 20
V. What the War Taught Her . 22
Why My Mother Stayed with My Father . 23
A Garden in the Desert . 24
My Mother's Optimism . 25
At the End: My Father . 26
I. My Father Dying . 26
II. Pigeons . 27
III. A Sonnet About Dying . 28
At the End: My Mother . 29
I. My Mother Prays for Death . 29
II. How Can I Ask My Mother . 30
III. Dying in a Blue Room in Arizona . 31
Souls Migrating in the Rain . 32

BOOK II. REFUGEES
Refugees . 36
The Happy Times and Places . 37
First Snow . 39
***
Mother Tells Me How She Met My Father . 41
The Day I Was Born in the Refugee Camp . 42
Lessons . 44
My Father's First Day in America . 46
Promised Land . 47
I. Coming to America, 1951 . 47
II. The Farms of Buffalo, New York . 48
III. Winter in America . 49
Looking for Work in America . 50
I. What My Father Brought With Him . 50
II. I Dream of My Father as He Was When He First Came Here Looking for Work . 51
III. His First Job in America . 52
Polish Triangle, Chicago . 53
All the Clichés about Poverty are True . 54
Friends in America: A Sonnet about Charity . 55
A Letter to My Mother from Poland, October 4, 1952 . 56
My Mother's Sister After the War . 57
Later in the Promised Land . 61
Me in America, 1952 . 62
Stories My Sister Danusia Told Me . 64
I. Poor Adas . 64
II. Sweet Little Birds . 65
III. The Storm . 65
Friends in America: Polack Joe's Story . 66
The Stories My Grandmother Told My Mother . 68
Family Life After the War . 70
Fussy Eaters . 71
Whistling . 72
A Young Soldier from Cze stochowa . 73
Here's What My Mother Won't Talk About . 74
Chores . 75
Friends in America: The Polish Captain of Lancers . 76
Danusia . 78
Friends in America: Murdertown . 80
The Evil that Men Do . 84
My Father's Prayer . 86
Two Worlds of Language . 88
I. Missing Pieces . 88
II. Dumb Polacks . 89
III. Kitchen Polish . 90
IV. My Grandparents . 91
The Old Country . 94

BOOK III. THE WAR
Landscape with Dead Horses, 1939 . 96
September 1, 1939: The Day World War II Began . 97
Fear (A Poem Based on a Story by Tadeusz Borowski) . 99
***
My Mother Before the War . 101
My Father Before the War . 102
There Were No Miracles . 104
The German Soldiers . 105
I. German Soldiers Moving East . 105
II. German Soldiers Come to a Polish Village . 106
III. German Soldiers Stealing from the Dead . 107
IV. What the German Soldiers Left Behind . 108
My Mother Was 19 . 110
Cattle Train to Magdeburg . 112
My Father Talks about the Boxcars . 113
Grief . 114
A Cross of Polish Wood . 115
My Mother's First Winter in Germany . 116
Sisters in the Labor Camps . 117
Hunger in the Labor Camps . 118
I. What My Father Ate . 118
II. What a Starving Man Has . 119
III. Among Sleeping Strangers . 120
IV. The Germans Who Owned Them . 122
A Story My Mother Heard in the Slave Labor Camp . 123
The Work My Father Did in Germany . 124
A Life Story . 125
My Father Tells a Story . 126
Brief History of a Mother's Sorrow . 127
My Father's Teeth . 128
The Forests of Katyn . 129
Third Winter of War: Buchenwald . 130
My Mother's Dreams in Wartime . 142
What My Father Knows About Killing . 143
Today the Gypsies Are Burning . 144
Temptation in the Desert . 145
Photos of Dead Mothers . 146
The Bombing of Magdeburg . 147
Pietà in a Bombed Church, Magdeburg . 148
His Dead Eye . 150
Worthless . 151
War and Peace . 152
In the Spring the War Ended . 153

EPILOGUE
The Story Behind the Poems . 155
In Heaven . 159

APPENDIX
"Red Poppies on Monte Cassino" . 161

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 163

AUTHOR BIO . 165

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS. 167
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE