SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2012 77 Anne Swärd Breathless Deborah Bragan-Turner, tr. MacLehose Press Six-year-old Lo and thirteen-year-old Lukas meet in the aftermath of the brush fire that signals the end of Lo’s idyllic childhood. By turns tender and sinister, their relationship will leave Lo marked forever. Swärd weaves a tapestry of wellworn themes with a fresh vision that makes them seem new again. Su Tong The Boat to Redemption Howard Goldblatt, tr. Overlook Press When the truth of their ancestry is revealed, Secretary Ku and his son flee and attempt to rebuild their lives among the boat people. Set during the Cultural Revolution, The Boat to Redemption depicts a people trapped by desire while under the constant watch of the Communist Party. Nota Bene also affected the rest of the world because the direct murders were part of World War II. In addition to its literary merits, this anthology is a reminder in 2012 of what happened in the 1940s. The original poems of this book were written in Hungarian, texts of a belletristic tradition, and were translated by the two editors as well as by the English poet Clive Wilmer. The poets include Radnóti, the Anglo-Hungarian poet George Szirtes, Vas, Castro and Gyukics, Lakatos, Zollman, Mezei, Feldmár, Csoóri, Liebert, Székely, Roberts and Kurdi, Tótfalusi, Orbán, Gorman , K. Miklós, Szilágyi, McKendrick, Daróczi, Berengarten, Sumonyi, Bosley , Turczi, Munzel, and Borbély. In his foreword to the collection , Sir Martin Gilbert writes: “Each poem in this volume is a world of its own, an assertion of the struggle of the human spirit faced with inexplicable torments.” And so it is—the Holocaust lacks merriment, even optimism; the poems are a cycle of Jeremiads each showing that living at the time would have been equal with staying in hell. The three outstanding poets of the anthology had different fates. Miklós Radnóti, a Catholic convert, was arrested as a Jew and martyred in Lager Heidenau in Serbia. His final poems were found in the pocket of his greatcoat, among them this fragment : “I lived on this earth in an age / When man fell so low he killed with pleasure / And willingly, not merely under orders . . .” János Pilinszky suffered the fate of a POW and transmitted his experiences into haunting poetry: “And like a cattle-yard prepared / for the herded beasts outside – / its gates flung open violently – / death, for them, gapes wide.” István Vas, a man of letters and an exceptional intellectual, survived the Hungarian fascist regime hiding in the flat of a friend. He commented on the order to wear a yellow star: “It’s not those who today wear stars, / under my own I bear the scars; / my country’s yellow mark of shame.” The anthology contains a wide range of poets: those Jews who died, those who survived the Holocaust, whose relatives persisted, those who were Romani, those who are now middle-aged, and those who are young. It is a reminder to remember and to remain vigilant. Thomas Kabdebo Newcastle, Ireland Alan Mintz. Sanctuary in the Wilderness : A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew Poetry. Stanford , California. Stanford University Press. 2012. isbn 9780804762939 Alan Mintz’s Sanctuary in the Wilderness represents a grand undertaking of the emergence and development of Hebrew poetry in America. Only with language, the magical vehicle of human expression, is it possible to tell such a story—all at once a group story, a personal story, and a national story. Robert Graves writes in “To Juan at the Winter Solstice” that “there is one story and one story only that will prove worth your telling , whether as learned bard or gifted child.” Rainer Maria Rilke tells us that objects come to us to be named; one sits and waits for the words to come. Writers and poets anywhere sit and wait for the tale to unfold. Indeed, there is one story and one 78 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY reviews story only that will prove worthy of the telling. And so it is also with Sanctuary in the Wilderness. But this story is a story with a clear imperative...