Product Description

a verse memoir about the author's parents' experiences in a Nazi slave labor camp in Germany

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #699771 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Customer Reviews

Important and Beautiful; Should Be Read Widely
John Guzlowski's "Lightning and Ashes" is an important and beautiful book that should be widely read.

Guzlowski's Polish-Catholic parents were victimized by the Nazis. His father, an orphan farm worker, became a slave laborer in the Buchenwald Concentration District. His mother, the child of a forest ranger, was also pressed into slave labor. Guzlowski himself was born as a Displaced Person after WW II. Eventually, his family made their way to the United States, where Guzlowski became a professor and poet.

Fans of good writing and, indeed, anyone who has ever looked at his or her parents or grandparents and thought, "What were their lives like before I was born? What are they thinking about when they get that faraway look in their eyes?" will find much to love in this book.

I didn't finish this book feeling as if I'd read yet another history of the Holocaust. I finished this book feeling as if I'd read a book about family, and about love, about the mysteries of the parent-child relationship, and, indeed, about the mysteries of the child-sibling-parent relationship.

Guzlowski's poems about his witnessing his mother's abuse of his sister, and his pleading with his sister not to cry, transcend any given time or place. These are poems about family, and accurate, intimate snapshots of families under exceptional stress -- in this case, the stress of post-World War Two readjustment -- provide uniquely valuable insight into our own families.

Guzlowski's poetry is easy to read. This is not the kind of poetry that requires its reader to have an advanced degree in obscure terminology to understand. Guzlowski uses vocabulary that a peasant or worker would use to name the items in his world: a chicken, a stove, a club, blood. Guzlowski's sentence structure is basic, as the examples, below, show:

"These men belonged to the Germans
the way a mule belonged to the Germans."

"We soldiers are only human. We love
to kill. It is the hidden God in each of us."

"Dear Baby Jesus,
If You have any pity left
bestow it, please, on my wife.
She suffers from the war.

You know about her mother,
and her sister and the baby,
and the things
she's told no one."

Guzlowski's basic vocabulary and sentence structure reflect how aged peasants often talk. In this aesthetic choice, Guzlowski honors his parents. He communicates to us, his readers, that the language of peasants is good enough to communicate big, hard ideas and feelings.

Guzlowski's basic words and sentences also reflect how American children hear their immigrant parents, who communicating across gulfs of language and experience, must revert to the lowest common denominators of speech.

Guzlowski's basic language also reflects attempts at understanding by those of us who did not live through WW II or the Holocaust. Big words and complex sentences give way; what we hear and remember are images, for example, a girl discovering a sister's body parts sliced off and left lying in the dirt beside her corpse.

Again, simple language. No attempts to sensationalize or sentimentalize.

Guzlowski's "Lightning and Ashes" is among the best writing out there that attempts to come to terms with the hardest events of recent history. That's reason enough to read it.

There are other reasons to purchase and read this book, though. The experience of Polish Catholics under the Nazis during World War Two has been distorted beyond recognition in recent "historical" texts that have sold outlandish numbers of copies and received the kind of press attention usually devoted to dysfunctional starlets. Guzlowski's slender volume of poems stands as corrective to those powerful, popular lies.

There will be some measure of justice for the maligned dead when books like "Lightning and Ashes" receive as much attention as those other books whose titles I won't mention here.

These dead are very patient in their wait for justice.

Just ... buy and read this book. And pass it on.

Masterful, poignant, beautiful......

One critic dubbed Guzlowski as one of the "great recording angels" of
our age. This is apt praise for a true poet whose words are simple,
straightforward, and sing with raw power. Guzlowski's parents met in
Hitler's labor camps and survived to build a life out of "lightning
and ashes." This book is his testament to them.

In the prologue poem, "My Mother Reads My Poem 'Cattle Train to
Magdeburg'" the poet's mother shares a few of her memories, but only a
few:

Even though you're a grown man
and a teacher, we saw things
I don't want to tell you about.

Guzlowski describes his mother as "the poet of dead ends, old despairs/written in whispers..." His father is "a man held together/with stitches he laced himself."

This is a masterful work, poignant and beautiful. Highly recommended.

Beautiful and brave
Lightning And Ashes is not an easy book. Like "lightning," it lights up the sky in shocking flashes. Where it lands it may burn what it strikes, leaving ashes in its wake. Death by war, torture, famine, depression: these are the topics relentlessly faced by the author, himself tragically familiar with these experiences through his parents' survival in World War II. In the opening poem, his mother says "Even though you're a grown man/and a teacher, we saw things/I don't want to tell you about." Well, this poet wants to tell you about them. It's worth listening.