Poet Bill Arthrell's "Ukranian Heart: The Land This Tortured Beauty Through the Eyes of an American Poet"

 

By chance, I found a beautifully moving book of poems at the library while browsing a shelf of local writers; the poetry collection is titled, Ukrainian Heart: The Land, This Tortured Beauty, Through the Eyes of an American poet. I have been reading a poem a day all October. Or sometimes two, when the poems are extremely short. I end up re-reading the intro and back pages of the author's background story probably about every three poems or so--meaning every few days. The sentiment in this book is sweetly sad, sadly intense, and real. It seems to be not contrived for any sake of commercialism; in fact, these poems did not come out and about this year in 2022 during Putin's Russia's current war on the Ukraine that we keep seeing on the news and dropping tears over as more bombs and bullet shells are 

dropped; these poems are the result of many years of many wars on the beautiful bread basket of Ukraine, as it seems most everyone has at one time or another coveted its grain. 

I was so surprised to find this book and then see that it was published in 2019. Arthrell is pictured on the back cover posing with two Cossack fighters in Ukraine, which he felt inspired to visit on account of the Maiden Revolution. Arthrell is a retired high school history teacher from Cleveland, Ohio, local to me and the local library because Cleveland is a one-hour hop and skip and jump down the road East from me and the state's Huron Public Library. He is also pictured on an inside page of the book standing with "The Holodomor Girl" which stands at the Holodomor Victim's Memorial in Kyiv, Ukraine. The name means, "Death by Starvation." The Ukrainian people were forced to starve. Any real-life girl or person would be shot to death for holding the five stalks of wheat the statue holds and be blamed for "theft," Arthrell explains. Ten million Ukrainians were starved to death deliberately in 1932-33 and also by Russia two other times, in 1946-47 and back farther in 1921-22. At the time of the publication of this book Russia was invading the Ukraine much as it is now. 

In Part One of this book, the poet shares his experiences in the Ukraine, which he portrays as a land of great beauty such as of the "farms so large--/so much bigger/than dreams," he describes in the very first poem in a "Rapid Gallop/to the horizon/where eternity begins" (p. 16), where the large farms lead to eternity. 

I remember a day when my daughter was little, an afternoon in which my husband and I finished digging and tilling a new backyard garden, one that was rather large for our large-enough yard; our kindergarten-age daughter ran to the middle of the garden, exclaiming, "Oh, Mommy, this is just like a dream!" She was filled with glee over how big it was under the sun above and all the things we would grow in it. That is how the poem I described above, called "Ukraine" made me feel in regards to its large farm image.

Part Two of the book is called "A Nation of Survivors" and the poems in it discuss the horrors of war and the dead, yes, but then those that survived. Those that survived, survived in cities of streets lined with "veins and marrow" (p. 66) like concrete sorrow into the hope of a

better tomorrow. Part Two is filled with historically political facts about all the fighting for the land of the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people's  frequent dire struggles. Time and time again, they have had to defend themselves against other nations wanting to take them over, such as, we now know, Russia, though also "the Mongol Horde, to the Ottoman Turks; from Poland to the German Nazis" (p. 120).

Part One is a nice, easy read; Part Two is a tough read for those who feel others' pain. How could one not become empathetic, however, after reading these poems, how could the terribleness of what some humans do to other humans not be felt when you read about children being killed? What mother or father or sister or brother or grandmother and grandfather can read these poems and not cry? 

Yes, I have been reading one poem a day.  

Source

Arthrell, Bill. Ukrainian Heart. 2019. ISBN #978-617-7777-43-3.

Indian Summer: Hearing a Song by That Name at That Time of Year (Or This Time of Year, September 2-7, 2022)

September 2, 2022, with editing September 7, 2022

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oE38psKkcNM

When summer is passing and seems but a dream, there is that memorable afterglow of warmth and yet the light still much remains. At the end of August the night air got chillier and the daytime sun felt a bit more distant, as if not as direct somehow. This leads us into the dream of autumn that we fall into before deep winter sleep. The song "Indian Summer" by Michael Jones and David Darling from their album Amber aptly captures that feel of Autumn's Indian Summer in the woods or along a country road, one in which it is so easy to feel, even if a tad bit chilly, cozily ensconced. We feel yet the warmth of the color amber as if a teardrop of the sun like a piece of liquid sunshine falls upon the ground as the leaves turn yellow to orange.

Here is what strikes me as I hear the fingers striking the keys and the strings of the piano and the oboe, about this music being successful in describing this time of year:

At the very beginning of the song, the music fades in, like a fade-in of a movie; this can sound to the listener like a past continuous action (action verb!), the way a recurring scene within the mind's memory, going over and over a place in time. It is like then the afterglow of the warmth of the summer. 

Some patterns emerge like more and more leaves dropping upon the scene--I love this. Then, both the instruments themselves--the piano and the oboe--and those patterns of notes begin to layer themselves upon one another like bunches or clusters of leaves falling into layers or piles upon the ground. I love how music can depict nature, can mirror it. 

So much of music is inspired by nature. Go to YouTube and search for the titles of the songs on the album Amber by Michael Jones and David Darling. Also recall Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and Claude Debussy's "Claire de Lune" mirror the moon, and how "The Blue Danube" waltz was inspired by the river of that name.