FROM HORRIFIC TO JOY
Frank Wilson – The Philadelphia Inquirer
South Bend Tribune, IN
July 2 2007
Poetry
All the tribes of humankind have had their sorrows, but the Armenians
— like the Jews — seem to have had more than their share. Between
1915 and 1917, deported and massacred by the Young Turk rulers of
the moribund Ottoman Empire, they became the victims of the 20th
century’s first genocide.
The memory of that horrific episode clearly resonated in Gregory
Djanikian’s family — for this book is transparently a memoir in
verse — and his portrayal of it in the first part of the book makes
for tough reading, in no small measure because of the understated,
pastoral tone he often employs to detail atrocity (one of the poems
is titled "Armenian Pastoral, 1915").
Consider "Deportation Song": "This one was given a week to get ready
… This one hired carts and mules … This one hid in the pantry
bin … This one carried his son on his back … This one was already
being led away … This one was butchered … and this one was crying
for water …"
Accident of birth spared Djanikian — who heads the creative-writing
program at the University of Pennsylvania — direct experience of the
1915 deportation, but not a later one, in 1956, after the French,
British and Israelis attacked Suez, when Armenians — including
Djanikian’s family — who had found refuge in Egypt after World War
I, were among the nationalities expelled by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s
government. And that is how 8-year-old Gregory Djanikian came to
America.
"Immigrant Picnic," with its catalog of his mother’s endearing
malapropisms, is both hilarious and touching, as is the account of
the card game he has with her. Before dealing, his mother declares,
"Let justice prevail." And so it does: She wins just about every hand.
It all comes together in the splendid penultimate poem, "Mystery Farm
Road," where two boys meet in memory and imagination thanks to "a book
read one summer … in Alexandria." That boy, Djanikian tells himself,
"reading a book / and mouthing the words "huckleberry and harvest /
that will cast a spell on him for years … that boy is you." But so is
"the boy by the river / baring his calves under the black willows."
For all its focus upon the lives and customs of Armenians, this book
makes you proud to be an American.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
