Counting the Lost

By Gail Peck

Main Street Rag, $14

BY RUTH MOOSE

Special to The Pilot

What's an ekphrastic poem?

I want to answer myself with the phrase, "beats me," except I do know an ekphrastic poem when I see one.

I just have never been able to write one, at least not well! For me, my way of thinking, most ekphrastic poems come off flat on the page. They're just descriptions of something another artist has made: a sculpture, a painting, a photograph.

Except Keats "Ode to a Grecian Urn" which is the top daddy, granddaddy of all ekphrastic poems. Don't want to take on that one, where the bar is set beyond beyond, way up past high.

But saying all that, I have to say when I read an ekphrastic poem that works, I bow and take my hat off.

Gail Peck's ekphrastic poems do that for me. She's a skilled, serious poet who takes on serious subjects and wrings your heart. I bet she could get a nod and a tear from old Keats himself there in Poets Heaven. Peck, who lives, and writes, in Charlotte is one of those who publish in prestigious places, win prestigious awards and yet is not as well-known and read as she should be. "Counting the Lost" may change that. Let's hope. She deserves readers worthy of her work.

Peck's poems, some of which are based on children's drawings from the Terezin concentration camp, will not leave you unmoved. They stand up from the page, look you square in the eye and demand attention that must be paid to the horror that happened: the Holocaust.

Artfully arranged, Peck begins with an innocuous poem, "The Goblets," about a memory and her mother. Then she goes on to "Hiding," based on "a compilation of voices of children who were hidden in Holland, then photographs by Robert Capa "taken near Weisel, Germany, l945." And a wood relief by Ernst Barlach.

Another poem is "Lamentation: In Memory of Ernst Barlach Who Died in l938" based on a sculpture by Kathe Kolllwitz. And these are just the tip of the pen.

Peck will shake your sensibilities, make you remember even in her dedication, "For all those who have perished in war, especially the children."

The last poem, "A Song," ends, "Life without music, feet with nothing to dance to, no clapping hands. Play me a song, Bill."

Write me a poem, Gail Peck, move me to places in my soul I seldom go, and must renew and renew again.

Ruth Moose is a longtime reviewer for The Pilot.