Tourist in Hell

by Eleanor Wilner

Eleanor Wilner’s poems attempt to absorb the shock of the wars and atrocities of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In their litany of loss, in their outrage and sorrow, they retain the joy in life, mercy for the mortal condition, and praise for the plenitude of nature and the gifts of human artistry.

 

As with her six earlier collections, these poems are drawn from the transpersonal realm of history and cultural memory, but they display an increasing horror at the bloody repetitions of history, its service of death, and the destructive savagery of power separated from intelligence and restraint. The poems describe “a sordid drama” in which the players wear “eyeless masks,” and the only thing time changes is the name of the enemy. Underneath it all, driving “the art that” in both senses “keeps nothing at bay,” swim the enormous formal energies of life, the transitive figure that moves on in the depths, something glimpsed in the first light, something stronger than hope. 

 

“It is a relief to come across work in which a moral intelligence is matched by aesthetic refinement, in which the craft of the poems is equal to their concerns.”--Christian Wiman, Poetry

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Kate Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having (shamefully) never read Wilner’s work, I picked this up for $6 at Commonwealth Books last week. I’m eternally grateful I did. Published in 2010, Tourist in Hell is Wilner’s reckoning of the horrors of war in the 20th and early 21st century. Ironically, Wilner wields language as a weapon, elucidating the lessons from history we refuse to learn. To me, Tourist in Hell is perfect poetry. Using religious allusions, Wilner stresses the sanctity of life and the glaring juxtaposition to the fervor in which we incite violence in a god’s name.

Admittedly, I went into this collection wary of the subject matter. Would the writing be singed with vanity or tone-deafness? Maybe I was overthinking it all, but I wanted to ensure that “white women tears” weren’t the focal point of the writing, especially with a subject matter as delicate as this. After finishing this collection, I am a bit ashamed to have undermined Wilner’s work with my own projections and preconceived notions. Wilner masterfully decenters herself while displaying such personal vulnerability, a feat that not many can do, (poet or otherwise).

I knew a silly Goodreads review would prove insufficient in explaining how moved I was by this collection, so I found a random address online and sent Ms. WIlner (89 years old) a 5 page letter of fan mail. I’ll keep you guys posted if I get a Cease and Desist in the mail.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

After finishing this collection of poems, I suddenly realized that I was back in my apartment.

Wilner's poetry is akin to traveling. The poet herself is a well-versed (pun-obviously-intended) traveler and brings a global perspective into her scope with her collection of autonomous but partially-related poems. There are, like all poetry collections, gems that hauntingly remain with the reader with metaphors that capture: a fly-in-sap's correlation to our own desire to outwit time; a hand playing an unstrung harp to represent wind through a space where trees used to be, et al.

It is a very quick read, but you'll feel like you're just recently back from a year's sojourn.

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of us have had vacation days full of disappointments, from cancellations and lost luggage to national disasters and pandemics. We’ve felt a bit like tourists in hell, and I’d have welcomed more wry humor. Many of Wilmer’s poems are about how hellish mankind has made our planet through inhumanity, war, and destruction of our habitat. The condemnation is deserved, the poems are beautifully written, but although those were my favorite poems, I appreciated them more one at a time and not as a collection. Since I am reading them during the pandemic, they were too discouraging read together. That said, here are a few of my favorite passages from our auditions for hell.

“Opening the Eyes,” is about a sculptor releasing Athena’s owl from the stone, as he

“…found what granite hid or marble
wore within, his owl would be
freed from the burden of bad augur,
released back to the wild from history,
iconography, and from Athena –
the armored, icy mind of war, what posed
as wisdom, but was policy….

…And as he split
the center of each eye, as if
to make the pupil see the light,
the owl cried out – heart-scalding shriek
that tore the night: cried out
for what it could not help
but see.”

One of my favorite poems that set the tone for most of the book is “Back Then, We Called It “The War.” It begins

“And though, since that time, I have read many books,
have followed the smoke trail of countless thoughts
rising from the burning libraries;
though I have inquired in the ruins of many cities,
in the writing on fallen walls,
in the blank stares of skulls in the killing fields,
in places hidden and open:
nevertheless, I do not understand.”

Stanzas two and three end also end, “I do not understand,” and the final stanza brings in a little girl playing in the rubble “who will never understand.”

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The more hard-nosed and ambitious poems of the first half work best for me here, especially the ones tinged with political rage or collapsing recent tragedies into ancient ones. While there are some fine, spooky moments throughout, the gentler pastoral half has fewer hooks and tend to linger less.

But to me one poem towers over the rest, probably because it was my first introduction to Willner, “Magnificat.” It’s a creepy, unsettling piece with echoes of both Yeats and Cheney. This is how I like political poems: with legs that keep stalking you, just out of sight but not out of earshot.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impassive? Yes. Standing stone, crown of brass,
drapes of granite, tits of steel. Impervious. Impasse.
When the woman with the torch has had her lights
shot out, snipers from the factory of lies, gnats
from the sodden swamps of shredded files, rats
biting and biting, and everyone pretending not
to notice the rising welts, the caught breath,
the throes, the imperatives of venom, wealth.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really wonderful--when I heard Eleanor read from this, her newest collection, she apologized that the middle section was written "during the Bush years, so it's kind of...bummer lit," and that's not such a bad assessment. This poems, over all, mourn our inability to learn from past mistakes, especially when it comes to war and suffering, she seems to suggest is our greatest cultural strength (sigh). Wilner's perennial interest in Hellenic culture remains, but only insomuch as it informs contemporary comment on man's love affair with cultivating his own tragedy. In other words: bangarang.

[Liam Malone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it was me and my mood while reading this, but most of the poems bored me.