PRAISE:
In After the Telegram, Constance Alexander builds a compelling world of life during World War II that still feels resonant today because war, like grief, is unfortunately never-ending. The poems unfold masterfully, creating a narrative of a family gripped by fear and uncertainty, yet also a hope that propelled me to the end of the book. War tears through the everyday moments of family life, and some of the most powerful moments unfold between family dinners, reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, and children’s games. After the Telegram is a must-read as much as it’s a well-crafted poetic history lesson and an emotional gut-punch.
–Rocio Franco. Author of Where the Monarchs Never Die
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After the Telegram unfolds like a story being told, which is testament to Constance Alexander’s expertise in oral history traditions. Alexander’s poetry blends a young soldier’s own words, gleaned from his letters home during World War II, with details from her interviews with individuals who were children growing up amid wartime sacrifices and loss. With dignity and tenderness, Alexander’s work gives fresh voice to the intergenerational impact of war within a family and a community.
–Jayne Moore Waldrop. Author of Retracing My Steps and Drowned Town
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Constance Alexander has used the pen, like the famous artist Norman Rockwell used the brush, to help us feel — not just remember — a particularly melancholy and heroic era of our greatness.
–Justice Bill Cunningham, (retired). Author and Veteran
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By viewing an American family during the Second World War through her moving poetry, Constance Alexander deftly weaves history and memory together, leaving the reader with an incredible sense of that time and place. Her themes of childhood, innocence, longing, and loss firmly root the reader in the past, while demonstrating that these same themes and experiences still echo today.
–Stuart W. Sanders. Historian/Author of Perryville Under Fire, Murder on the Ohio Belle, and Anatomy of a Duel.
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Constance Alexander‘s new collection, like all good books of poetry, asks us what we make of these, our interesting times: dark time, war time, heroic time, privation time, grief time. Set at the start of WWII, After the Telegram divides American lived experience into befores and afters: the plenty of butter, the scarcity of margarine; the innocence of wooden rifles and the experience of snipers’ bullets. Narrated always with heart and wit, Alexander coaxes time to dilate, accelerate, to pause and draw from the lining of its pockets the seeds of irreversible change. Mother’s voice quavers like the needle of the compass. Johnny is remembered for the woolen thickness of his uniform and the coolness of its gorgeous brass buttons.. Part elegy, part history, Alexander amends the usual question — not where were you, but who were you when history was made?
–Isabel Duarte-Gray. Poet/Author of Even Shorn
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After the Telegram is a remarkable and powerful engagement with history. It engages history in a very personal way, linked to memory and most of all emotion. Too often, the focus of those who engage with history is facts and being objective is a high value for them. But history happens to real people at a very personal level, and we are far from objective as it intrudes into our lives. Alexander’s restrained words capture the emotions of history as it unfolds at the most basic level of society – the individual and the family. Fear and hope rise and fall as events unfold and the human cost of war hits home. Unexpected, but not really, and the lasting impact of loss comes through powerfully.
–William H. Mulligan, Jr. President, Jackson Purchase Historical Society, Professor of History emeritus
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Constance Alexander possesses a sharp eye and ear for detail, and her poetry is born from a lifelong discipline of observation. In this collection of poetry, we see the influence of Alexander’s work in journalism and her appreciation for the role of history and memory in our lives. Seemingly small details reveal significant meaning during a crucial period in U.S. history and in the lives of people experiencing the uncertainty in that time. The poems in “After the Telegram” form a narrative, beginning from the attack on Pearl Harbor, pulling readers into the lives of children and adults who express the unique experience of being a witness to war. It is a lesson for our times, as well.
–Jennifer P. Brown. Hoptown Chronicle, founder and editor
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