“By delving into the past in her new chapbook, After Effects, poet, Judith Janoo, brings the reader from the depths of despair, caused by war, into the hope for peace. ‘.…like the memory/you didn’t know/ what to do with….’ from her poem, ‘What You Passed On,’ she details in another poem, ‘Beaches of Normandy,’ how the stain of war spreads to the family and friends of ‘….fishermen, farmers,/ teachers, turned soldiers….’ The poet engages the reader with the warrior and those around him with poetic empathy and visual reality. ‘….the suffering of gentle/man made infantry man…’ in her poem ‘I Am From,’ leads us generations forward to a peace march, where a granddaughter reminds us in the final words of the final poem, ‘Take to the Streets, February 15, 2003 ‘….it isn’t dangerous/to walk only to not say a word.’ Take the journey from war to the quest for peace in this elegant collection.”
–Dianalee Velie, Poet, and author of five collections, most recently, Ever After.
“In the very particular, Judith Janoo finds and reveals the universal: In her hands, battles that have wounded the ones we love echo the pain and fear of larger violence. In After Effects, she tugs at the details of a hay barn’s rafters, the “butterfly magnets” of pink blossoms, the whisper of fabric against wood. With precise and open language, she invites the reader into the family dance of anger, blame, and yet somehow enduring love. I know I will be re-reading her poems, many times, to treasure their flavor, fragrance, and tears.”
–Beth Kanell, Vermont poet and novelist, author of most recently, The Long Shadow
“The poetry of Judith Janoo’s After Effects speaks within the silent spaces she has so compassionately provided as we are left to contemplate, in safety, our own histories. Sounds echo like images she catches in countless mirrors…”beaches of gunfire: fishermen, farmers,teachers, turned soldiers, turned onto beaches of gunfire: gentle men…foot soldiers fog blinded…Souls crying for leaders.” I am certain that Ms. Janoo and I have marched together Fifth, Main & Pennsylvania. Judith Janoo’s geographies travel far and wide, from Normandy nightmares of beaches beyond Baghdad, to Buddleia laden with butterflies blooming in the absence of War. Judith Janoo teaches Peace to her daughter through the courage of her words, and in gratitude, to all who shall accompany her.”
–Peggy Sapphire, poet and author of A Possible Explanation, In the End a Circle, and The Disenfranchised: Stories of Life and Grief When An Ex-Spouse Dies.
s. j. cahill –
Powerful and moving. Accessible and insightful stories
reaching into the core of the far-reaching effects of war.
S. J. Cahill –
Even better on a second read–this is more than a book-shelf book/–this is for the coffee table.
A. McBean –
Beautifully written
Carol Brouha –
“The Beaches of Normandy,” by Judy Janoo, is a poem about the invasion of Omaha Beach that stays in the heart because war’s horror is seen through the eyes of a loving daughter. As Janoo describes the invasion and her father’s desperate running across the beach and up the bluff and his running for the rest of his life, what also stays with the reader is the accurate detail from Jano’s research and the horrific immediacy of the war.
Janoo succeeds in giving us both this powerful lament of war and a song of understanding the aftereffects of war on her father. She is a sensitive poet with skill in using alliteration, assonance, repetition, and internal rhyme: “their landing craft wind-shifted,/ water-mined in iron pieces off beaches/ of gunfire.”
Though Janoo once gave her father a typewriter as a tool of therapy and truth, she has to tell the story for him because he could not. As she tells the story for him, it becomes poignant history for all people worldwide who hunger for peace.