richard chetwynd

In a sequence of 66 prose poems, Heroic Age moves from the heroic to the absurd, the historical to the hysterical, and back again. A mini-epic that offers a kaleidoscopic tour of 20th century history and its impact on those who survived it through a poetic rendering of rumor, facts, stories, legends, and fables. Only a single name appears in the whole text, and that person, a widower, is an innocent bystander. Otherwise, pronouns proliferate as impersonal identifiers of the individuals among the figures of the Father, Mother, and Daughter, and as a way of exploring the trauma and spirit of survival in a constant battle for the soul of the individual. It begins with a funeral and ends with a marriage, but decidedly unlike any funeral or wedding you might have attended. In between, goats, chickens, and soldiers appear, and, most importantly, history, which insists on having its say, throwing up the same memes and truths, the same ideas that remain unfit for a humane life. These poems create their own world, a surrealistic reflection of confrontations with history as a force of nature, an homage to the people with the power to resist and an elegy to the those who succumbed.