The Damages of Morning (“mourning”?) begins with “Reading with Students About Death Camps.” The words let loose an outflow of tears. Memory is a char of newspapers, records, maps. The title poem asks, how does a family, how does a child or innocence itself survive war? In these epic, unflinching poems, Todd recreates a scene of violence to humanity and to the earth itself, where in an icy landscape a shard of ice must thaw into spit for someone to swallow all that is left, a paste of “ricey dust.”
- The Damages of Morning
