Thoughts on a Poet

This powerful work has been deeply affecting for me in so many ways far beyond the sheer scope and horror of the Armenian genocide related within the pages. I found myself, for the first time (I'm kind of a nerd about not marking texts for reasons I cannot fully explain) making notes, relegating passages to my hard drive and writing about the writing process as I read. I think, after reading David's thoughts, I can fully agree that the reason the text works so well is that Balakian does a phenomenal job of showing the cost of genocide through the most human of lenses.

Balakian would have been fully justified in writing a nonfiction work using the numbers of dead, the horrifying mechanics of mass murder and the modern political problems associated with the events. However, his poet's soul has brought us a heart-breakingly vivid account made all the more alive because it is so personal and so rich in the flavor, thoughts and actions of a culture struggling to reassert itself, to just continue despite the horros forced upon it.

I am drawn again and again to the words, the food, the colors, the intellectual strugggles and persistant pride of these families to transcend and flourish despite the very best efforts of an entire country to erase them from the face of the earth. Throughout the book, Balakian brings us into the Armenian culture and thereby ensures that it will continue with passages celebrating the things that give him and his family identity:

"What minute steaks were to the Walls, lamb was to us. Leg of lamb tied up and stuffed with garlic and herbs; shoulders of lamb cooked slowly in the oven so they were falling apart and could be cut with a fork; lamb chops, thick with white fat rimming the knob of tender meat that flowered off the bone; the coveted necks of lamb—which were hard to get—cooked slowly in the oven with garlic and onions, eggplant, and sweet red pepper until the meat was tawny and soft."

This passage, so beautifully rendered, not only affects me as a writer (and food critic) but begins a conversation we see on such a larger scale when held against other passages:

"Food for us was a complex cultural emblem, an encoded script that embodied the long history and collective memory of our Near Eastern culture. I didn’t know that eating also was a drama whose meaning was entwined in Armenia’s bitter history. In 1960 I hadn’t even heard the phrase “starving Armenians,” nor did I know that my ancestors were among the more than two million Armenians who, if they weren’t killed outright, were marched into the deserts of Turkey  in 1915 and left to starve as they picked the seeds out of feces or sucked the blood on their own clothes. In 1960 I was unaware of the morality play of the dinner table, but I was aware of how irritatingly intense my parents were becoming about the propriety and ritual of dining."

But Balakian is not content to let the comparison sit lightly in our minds. He continues to give us a virtual feast of details in color, smell, taste and even the sound of what his culture means to him:

"There was regular fare: tongue, roast beef, chicken, soft-shell crabs, scallops, sole, bluefish, and always the weekly dolma. For dolma my mother bought whatever vegetables were fresh that week, cored them, then kneaded ground beef and lamb, onion, parsley, tomato pulp, lemon juice, rice, allspice, and pepper, and stuffed full each tomato, pepper, squash, or eggplant. If there were no worthy seasonal vegetables, she used cabbage or grape leaves. Dolma simmered on the stove, and to keep the juices in, a dish is placed  upside-down and pressed firmly on top of the dolmas as a second cover. On dolma days the whole house blossomed with fragrance"

Or, as he talks about the melding of suburbia with his Armenian culture:

"Perhaps the most interesting things my mother did in the kitchen were hybrids of southeastern Armenia and North America. Hamburgers with fresh mint and scallions, eggplants stuffed with collard greens and black-eyed peas, red lentils cooked into baked macaroni and cheese, homemade pizza topped with sautéed okra and eggplant, steaks grilled with fresh artichokes, turkey stuffed with spinach, pine nuts, currants, and hunks of French bread soaked in wine and ground sumak (dried barberry.)"

I think often how voice is critical for a writer and all the books we have read so far have been fascinating from that standpoint. Graves revels in satire when faced with the horror of war. Lifton comes at the subject as only a psychologist could. Balakian is ultimately a poet. All have mastered a voice.

One final thought as I look through my notes:

"My mother then said something that struck me as strange."Don't get too attached to places in life, Peter.""

I think it's worth asking if he, in fact, rejected that mesage, perhaps unconsciously. For Balakian has created a place, given us his culture a home that will as long as the words remain on the page and in our intellect and our minds.