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Cover photo by
David Levinthal
124 pp. 6 x 9 paperback
ISBN 0-944048-30-7
Timberline Press
6281 Red Bud
Fulton, MO 65251
One Thousand Years explores a history that still perplexes and
shames us, and offers poems that provide a vibrant contribution to an
essential literature.
The book includes a sequence "Under Sentence of Death: Occupied France
1943," a tribute to victims of the Nazi Occupation in France whose words Ray
adapted or "transcreated."
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See
review from
The Kansas City Star, April 11, 2004
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In North
American Review, January-February 2004, Vince Gotera writes:
"A guiding light of the Poets Against the Vietnam War movement in the 60s,
Ray turns here to another wartime topic, focused still on atrocity and its
effects. Other than that, I'm speechless: this book is huge. Ray
injects humanity (and inhumanity) into the event revisionists want to claim
never happened. Ray reminds us the victims and oppressors are people--they
are we. 'Oh,/ little canaries, sing louder,/ for the politicians are still
trying to murder us.// They are preparing the showers.'" |
Praise for One Thousand
Years:
Poems about the Holocaust
"David Ray writes with elegance, insight and beauty about one of the most
difficult, painful, but important events in the last century which continues
to demand our attention."
--Paul Ekman
"With bitterness, knowledge, irony, fury, frustration, loveliness, wisdom,
memory, care, rage, hope, reverence, disgust, originality, vision, David Ray
creates these beautiful poems."
--Gerald
Stern
"These poems that constitute a pacifist's reaction to the horrific
public events (and some private ones, too) of a lifetime are proof once
again of David Ray's humanity and artistry."
--Harvey Shapiro
"In this important
contribution to the history of human suffering David Ray's compassion, study
of history, and the power of his poetry show us that his own suffering has
not been in vain." --Studs Terkel
“In these poems on the horrors of the Holocaust, David Ray’s tone is
restrained, but his anger and compassion are all the more powerful for their
rendering into irony. Ultimately his poems on the shameful acts of which
men and women are capable become witnessing songs leading to a possibility
of understanding without forgetting." --Martin
Tucker
“The explorations in
these works give an unnerving accounting of those small parts of history we
have not thought through because, after all, how could we or why would we
want to imagine them... But they are the truth. These are poems for the
world, sturdy as poetry and alarming – still – as news of ourselves.
--Alberto Ríos
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