Erika: Poems of the Holocaust Book

As 20th-century poetry that is nakedly quintessential, William Heyen's Erika poems are unmatched. For it is a staggeering paradox that the poetry of the holocaust is best written by non-Jews. Written by Jews the poems of the holocaust add to the literature of lamentation, the basic literature of the Old Testament. No mattere how hauntingly great such works may be they cannot escape self-identification and the voice of the dirge. But to treat the holocaust in a larger context, to throw light on the poetry of the victim. One must be able to write a poem like "Riddle" or dozens of other of Heyen's Erika poems. Heyen has the added advantage, too, of being of German origin, some of whose family were themselves Nazis. This is the right poets with the "right credentials." And this is where the true holocaust poems come from. I doubt if they can be equalled.--Ken Shapiro