A Most Terrible and Deadly Season

In these urgent, heartfelt poems, hurt by history into utterance, tradition's glorification of the warrior is buried in the mass slaughter of modern war-killing fields where even "earth groans." In a language eloquent for its unvarnished truth, its clear-eyed vision, Mikel Vause brings to life, in wars since WWI, both its physical carnage and "its high cost of lost innocence," how war shatters meaning itself: "He granted, don't make no difference / ever since he came home from the war . . ."

-Eleanor Wilner, Winner of The Robert Frost Medal, MacArthur Fellowship, NEH Fellowship, Juniper Prize, and two Pushcart Prizes; and Author of Shekhinah; Otherwise; Reversing the Spell: New and Selected Poems; The Girl with Bees in Her Hair; and Tourist in Hell

Mikel Vause's War Poems are not for queasy stomachs or complacent lives. They tear open the heart to the suffering, horror, and dehumanization of war. The effects extend beyond the battlefield into the lifetimes of friends, lovers, and families. In some poems, the deceptive security of everyday life is juxtaposed with sudden death. Others point a bloody finger at those who sent others to die from safe positions. There is a harsh yet eloquent delicacy in this juxtaposition. I was left asking myself if war is just an inevitable part of the human conditions. I concluded that love for our fellow humans in this uncertain world is the only road to shared solutions, grace, and salvation.

-John Porter, Poet, Biographer / Autobiographer, world-class Mountaineer, Winner of the Grand Prize at the 2014 Banff Mountain Book Competition, and author of One Day as a Tiger: Alex MacIntyre and the Birth of Light and Fast Alpinism