Poetry of the Revolution : Responses to the Avant-Garde: Holocaust

Reznikoff's book is a new way of looking at literature. Near the end of the reading, it says that he was not focused on the names and dates of the things that he wrote about. All of the atrocities that he wrote about were witness testimonies and courtroom documents from the Nuremberg trials. I think this is more than poetry. This in a sense is history as it really happened. I have always had an interest in the holocaust and I've read many books about concentration camps and the massacre squads, but this painted a much clearer picture than any of them. I agree that all to often in history we get caught up in who did what and on what date. There are no names or dates in these poems, just stories. These stories affect me more than any history book I've ever read. By speaking about brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers the literature makes you think of your own family members. Reznikoff's "Holocaust" seems like the ultimate form of realism.