Rooms and Fields
Dramatic Monologues from the War in Bosnia
Lee Peterson
- 64 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Rooms and Fields
Dramatic Monologues from the War in Bosnia
Lee Peterson
About This Book
Winner of the 2003 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize
"These poems are full of surprises: the gods talk; ancient authors talk; the dictionary talks; very memorably, the bridge over the Drina River, roughly between Bosnia and Serbia, speaks two haunting poems. The dead talk, wolves talk, a teacher talks, with a chorus. Sometimes I like to imagine this long poem being staged. What the music would be! Who would do the sets! What languages...
Lee Peterson's Rooms and Fields: Dramatic Monologues from the War in Bosnia doesn't have a single wasted breath; its sense of necessity never lets up; I always feel that the people and animals and landscapes being written about are being honored. The work is compassionate and single-mindedly alive to its high purpose. What a rare thing it is to find the meeting of historical, political, and poetic wisdom."
— Jean Valentine, Judge
Rooms and Fields is history not simply documented and explored but also deeply felt. A poetic inquiry, its concerns are uniquely and fundamentally intimate. Compassion drives this collection of spare and gracious poems.
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THE NATIONAL LIBRARY
the day the library started burning.
I was loaded down with books on my way to my parents’ house.
caught on a huge, dry stone.
Pieces of paper lit on my shoulders and hands.
It was August, my birthday.
when she saw I’d cut my hair. I’d light a cigarette. I’d wait.
History, Papa. Not mathematics. Not physics.
My father mistrusted history.
until it covered my face
and the rest of me.
COLORS
by the blue and white flames of the stove
in the corner and watch my wife.
blooming across her chest.
and yellow wool.
jumpers for our neighbor’s son.
PAPA’S DREAM
will be born still.
will scan the woods for her.
and wear glass charms.
Kahva.
Tiho.
to dew and grain and the rest of us
sleeping.
WATER
around my shoulders and thighs. Which is safer,
the dark walk at night or the sprint in day? It’s a running debate.
Wine bottles, milk jugs everywhere.
on days we wouldn’t dare run
on nights the cement cracks where it wouldn’t.
ZLATA ON THE OUTSIDE
the outside.
to inside.
from the hills.
can catch you child.
Hurry.
MORNING
or the fields (the long grass sharp) while my son
and his boys sleep in the hills until noon.