As its title suggests, Triage is a dark book. But like the best of dark poetry-and the darkness of the Autumn Solstice, of winter, of death and of life--these verses lead us through darkness and into light.
The series of twelve sonnets, "Meditations: Iraq War 2003 provide the most coherent, insightful and ultimately hopeful thoughts I've seen on that subject. Moreover, she creates this political commentary in sonnet form, a challenge few poets take.
"How hard it is to find any god right now," she remarks; "today it seems our small round world's gone mad." She leads the reader through cynicism-(The promises of our leaders "sound as dull and cheap as tin") and despair as she observes young soldiers holding babies orphaned by war. These poems brutally recite the real facts, show us the real pictures of the war our soldiers have been fighting for so long; "it's hard to find real poetry in this."
And yet she does find real poetry in the war and all it means to us, whose sons and daughters are fighting as we have ordered them to do. Autumn leads the poet to a "Winter Sestina," through layers and layers of living.
The second series of sonnets, "News: May 2004," struck me most forcefully because throughout the dreadful news, she returns again and again to the blooming of pink poppies: "The news is bad today, but still the pink poppies bloom."
Jane Elkington Wohl is an English Instructor at Sheridan (Wyoming) College and Creative Writing Instructor for the Goddard College MFA in Writing Program. Goddard is a low-residency college in Plainfield, VT, specializing in allowing students to create their own bachelor's and master's degrees.
Jane's taut poems were included in Leaning into the Wind and Woven on the Wind, anthologies of writing by western women published by Houghton Mifflin. Her first book, from High Plains Press (Glendo, WY, was Beasts in Snow.
Read Jane Wohl's poetry and be heartened, given strength and courage to face the reality of the sometimes-brutal and foolish world in which we live.
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