At The End of the War

by DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt Clinton’s poems in At the End of the War layer ancient, sacred ritual and texts with contemporary life and language. Clinton’s chiseled poems bespeak a consciousness trying to come to terms with history, specifically the horrific atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust. There’s a communal “we” in many of the poems of a people searching for an identity, a marginalized culture trying to define and reinvent itself on the historical stage. At the End of the War offers a poetic coming to terms with history, a Taoist way to emerge on the other side of atrocities—and speaks poetically for the self and contemporary society. Krysia Jopek, author of Maps and Shadows, Aquila Polonica In DeWitt Clinton’s newest volume of poetry, he writes elegies to the past and present, poems that are lovely and compelling, but “always humble, always/ written in memory.” In sometimes long lyric-narratives, he interprets Biblical stories and honors the Holocaust, artists, and other poets, often in poems written in another’s voice, which allows readers another perspective. These are poems of searching and discovery, of consequences and coming-to-terms, of family, friendship, connections—some strong, some tentative. He writes, “Perhaps that’s all we can do—wonder and wonder some more.” Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-2018 and author of A Theory of Lipstick, Main Street Rag I wonder how DeWitt Clinton’s new book of poems, At the End of the War, happened to find me just as I needed it. I was weeping when I put it down, and then realized I had been weeping for quite some time. He writes in his poem “Here,” about the slaughter of Jews in the pogrom in the village of Busk in the I am very sorry to have put this in front of you. These are poems about having seen the world, having lived, and having observed what people can do to one both the good and evil. Alan Walowitz, author of Exactly Like Love, Osedax Press, and contributing editor, Verse-Virtual

Genres: Poetry

114 pages, Paperback

Published July 27, 2018

About the author

American politician DeWitt Clinton as governor of New York from 1817 to 1823 and from 1825 to 1828 principally supported the completed Erie Canal.

Battery, also Battery Park, provides the site of castle Clinton, built in 1808 for the defense of the harbor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeWitt_...

Reviews

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to this book in an interesting way. Dewitt Clinton was the featured reader at a small community college in central Michigan sometime around 1976 or 77. I was asked to read for a short period as one of the front acts. It was my second or third reading in Michigan. Clinton's book "the conquistador DOG texts" had just come out, and I bought it. $3.00. How many readings did I do or go to back then, and how many do I remember? I probably attended hundreds and remember a dozen or so. I have always remembered this one. And Clinton.

And a few months ago, he contacted me. Out of the blue. We had never had a correspondence or ever met again. He had no memory of me or of the reading. We swapped books, and I came to this one, very different than the book I read 40 plus years ago. Probably the only consistent trait between the two books, written a lifetime apart, is the effort to read outside the self, to find a touchstone in literature and/or history that can define or even stand in relief against the personal exploration.

In this collection of poems (none of which are frivolous and yet none are tedious) Clinton writes some that are responses to other poems, most of them well known (for instance, he has a really interesting poem that is inspired by Elizabeth Bishop's famous "In the Waiting Room." I wondered how Clinton could deal with Bishop's epiphany that has defined so much poetic response in the last 50 years, and he has done it well and movingly). He has written ekphrastic poems. And he has written several wonderful poems that build on Biblical stories/myths. Job's comforters become cranes and fly over Wisconsin. In "A Reading for Yom Kippur" Clinton has Jonah speak --

I should love man
but I really don't
the only time I found
the world wondrous
was deep inside
that marvelous fish

But the real story behind this book, the place where its emotional force begins, is the poet's conversion to Judaism, which happened fairly late in life (in his 50s if I'm reading things correctly). The poems that deal with this experience make up most of the book. Clinton writes about the experience mostly indirectly; we know there is a spiritual search going on, but we are not overwhelmed by it. There is no preaching. We are confronted with the poet's encounter with history, particularly the Jewish history of the last century. That history cannot be assumed, of course, and Clinton doesn't try to. He studies and he absorbs and he reaches a place of understanding that reaches past the experience of his conversion.

This is a book to experience, filled with a strong, simple music and with spiritual and intellectual excitement, yet it remains deeply moving.

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serious and accessible poems about how human nature extends into evil. It's not Evil with a capital letter, a force from an unknown outsider. It's harm to others. It's what we do on earth to each other. It's in us. Wisely, the book begins with poems based on Old Testament stories. Familiar Bible tales--Abraham and Isaac, Noah, Lot's Wife. And he pursues the truth of each. How easy it is to accept evil done, to live afterwards (or not), knowing, but surviving. And other poems, but I don't remember them so well after the Holocaust theme emerges. And then all hell is unleashed for us to remember. It's always there. We live afterwards. We live on. But we know. Deep stuff here, not just horror, but set within the Tao. No easy spiritualities allowed. But music and beauty and all the contradictions we find. These poems raise issues I don't know how to answer. I'm unsettled. Profound stuff, here. Read it.

[Deirdre Fagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the End of the War offers the past through lenses of the present. As the centers of poems are created through history and texts, deeply personal aches are brought to the fore in honor and for understanding. This is a collection varied in style and subject, but there is always precision and beauty in the language that continually beckons us forth.

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book of poetry! "Isaac" is going to live with me for a very long time.