The documentary “After: Poetry Destroys Silence” makes the case that poets bear witness to history during unconquerable tragedies. The nature aspects of the film from audio to visual are able to complement beautifully the poet’s correlate with them letting deeper emotional discussions where images or dramatizations fall short.
Nearing the day when we will have to approach this topic without the last existing witnesses of the Nazi regime, when they set their minds to obliterate every single existing or perceived religion alongside the Roma community, LGBT, and Able-bodied, feels surreal. When comprehending the past one can feel like a half-blind man attempting to grasp the essence of the animal, basing his entire thought and understanding of it through his tiny nook. There are so many methods to tell stories of the people who have lived through unforgettable trauma.
Historians scrutinize records to seek out information and compose relevant papers. In a gallery, we are able to see finds with wall cards providing useful explanations. There are also video essays, narrative movies, documentaries, historical plays, musicals, and other diverse forms. Constantly, new movies as “Blitz” which will be released in 2024, “The Kristallnacht,” “Irena’s Vow,” and “One Life,” or even “The Zone of Interest” which earned an Oscar together with the documentary series “The Commandant’s Shadow” came out this past year and were all based around WWII and the Holocaust. Today’s issues about candidates and policies still rely on the World War 2 events as a guideline to provide insight and replicate the intention to never forget the painful memories and regret of confronting such events.
There is a category of poets who mix song, talk, sermon, and even spit into their work. Some deal with the trauma of the Holocaust – be it its survivors or victims. In this film, poets discuss how and why they narrate stories of deep injustice and grief in a way that only Hollywood stars can. The poems are spun together with visual and audio poetry. Overlaying graphics accompany the words, which are sometimes abstract, illustrative, or impressionistic, while sound engineering was done by Helge Bernhardt. We see fingers pressing the round keys of an old Underwood writing machine, snow falling from the bare branches of trees, and archival photographs of the doomed.
The movie is a reply to the philosopher Theodor Adorno who said, “To write after Auschwitz is barbarous.” He argues that because the Holocaust was such a terrible experience, it is wrong to write art about it. This quote is used in the film as a counterargument along with Charles Bukowski’s statement, “When there is nothing to say; poetry emerges.” It does not follow that poetry is the only effective means of communication; it can help explain what the most truthful history or the most explicit performance lacks.
Janet R. Kirchheimer, a child of Holocaust survivors, tells us how she was able to comprehend her parent`s past as she transitioned into adulthood. Such experiences of hers have been beautifully compiled by her in form of a poem titled ‘How I Knew and When’, in which her mother supported her by reciting the final line of ‘Home is anywhere they let you in.’
He is also the editor of 100 Poems to Break Your Heart, and the author of How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry. In addition, Hirsch does not shy away from making blunt remarks about his surroundings, even in his dialogue which echoes with the cadence befitting a poet: He states, “The response is our duty.” Rather, the response is “language”; moreover, language must respond defy language. During such circumstances, as poets we ought to remind humanity of its history through retrospective artistic mediums rather. There are only so many languages I can master, Elder states, “Words of the 1940s should not have to be told to today’s people.”
We do have a distance between us but even that has a different angle and its own level of urgency.
Sabrina Orah Mark, a descendant of the survivors, uses more general and informal language. Porn recently he was given a French sardine which is supposed to parallel the shiva that takes place at the end of the mourning period. It’s one of the best scenes in the film and reinforces the assertion that poetry is a phenomenon that has to be heard rather than read. The sounds are just as important as the spoken word: “All I could hear was shiver, shiva, shhh” – and by this way, the film presents a Kaddish poem a holocaust survivor recalls who holds the perspective that ‘nothing is hopeless’ but in reality describes the agony of hunger: “all these details are well sewn in my head, so in the end, i took the ground and ate it.”
And this is by Paul Celan, another Holocaust poet and survivor. He. was a die-hard Freudian who learned six languages and a translator of engligh poetries by American poets Robert frost and Emily Dickinson, only post he finished his war draft. But even before he ended his life in 1970, he chose to pen down “in the languahe of the people who murdered his family“ poems. Anomalous poeticks also infimejoy sway the leser do an extremely harrowing poem which was found after the war in a milk canenant were stowe from the warsaw ghetto.
History has seen poetry composed in all societies, cultures, and ethnic groups, so Hirsch argues. But in times of turmoil, writing meant a little bit of salvation even for those who lost freedom, lost food, and eventually lost life. That compassion which one can’t articulate can be written in a poem one day.
Taylor Mali who is famously known for the poem of what it is that A Teacher Makes (“I make kids wonder/I make them question/I make them criticize I make them apologize and mean it”) also expresses his trauma over losing his wife through a deep penetrating poem which is both personal and painful.
A poet, Alicia Suskin Ostriker defines the concrete benefit derived from what only poetry can achieve, “Poetry goes below the surface….in a way that journalism and academic language can never do. Poets are the ones who handle trauma in poetry.” She further illustrates that reticence is as effective as a testimony because it turns the audience into participants and co-authors of the poem. Similarly, this film tantalizes us and compels us to self-describe the words of the Poets.
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