AMERICAN FRAKTUR

It my experience there are two kinds of veterans – those who talk about their wartime experiences and those who don’t. My father was the latter.

Throughout my childhood, WWII was very present. In the scratchy wool Army blanket with his serial number which we spread on the beach every summer, in the cot we opened up when relatives came for holidays, in the duffle bag I was allowed to take to college, in the combat boots he wore for yard work and to paint the house. Yet, despite the ever-present evidence of his service, I knew almost nothing of where he had been in Europe or what he did there.

After he died in 2000, finding my father’s discharge papers in his safe deposit box only made me want to learn more.

Like many quests, this one was full of unexpected discoveries and frustrations. I found myself more and more drawn to the question of one American family’s complicated relationship to the country from which it had emigrated more than 150 years ago. I was also thinking about the effect on contemporary life of world war, the enduring legacy of 9/11, and the persistence of racism.

Along the way, I unearthed lies, delusions, self-deceptions. I learned the answers to some questions, but discovered I would never be able to answer others.

American Fraktur is the ongoing result of these explorations. At the time of my first research trip to Southwest France in 2013, I thought of this as a completely new body of work, a much-needed break from my writing about 9/11. Over time, though, this has come to seem like the natural continuation of that work, just as 9/11 continues to reverberate through current events, here and around the world.

Poems from this manuscript have appeared in many journals. The manuscript as a whole was chosen by Jane Hirshfield for the 2018 Rochelle Ratner Memorial Prize from Marsh Hawk Press.