Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Though grief is not a willed response, the American with German connections (uncle and father-in-law fought for Hitler) may understandably make a pilgrimage to a (literally) God-forsaken place such as Bergen-Belsen to evoke the proper feelings of sorrow and horror. He has a book of poems he wants to write, and he will be reading Elie Wiesel and Albert Speer, respectively survivor and devil's agent, for more atrocity news. Good will in all of this, but grief is not a willed response, and affectation too often displaces exploration as Heyen tries to make poems out of graves and gas chambers, obeying Susan Sontag on 'the moral function of remembering.' If only unrealized art—apostrophes to the dead, laconic diarizing—had the power to move us as Heyen intensely wills! But it usually doesn't; except for some sharp twinges from powerful borrowed details ('workers checked the mouths of the dead, which they tore open with iron hooks'), these pages leave pretty much interred the past that will alone cannot resurrect." Reviewed by Robert Jackson, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)