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by Ae Reiff (Author)
What are we to do with the hundred millioned victims of war? Red Head: A Reparation for Cruelty (2022) reimagines the ancient bardic tradition of Taliesin through a modern lens of redemption, and renewal. Echoes of early Welsh heroic poetry like Y Gododdin (Aneirin's elegy for warriors fallen at Catraeth), these "poems of the unknown soldier"-anonymous voices rising from battlefields both historical and metaphysical --open with vivid battlefield scenes of fallen warriors as a metaphor for sacrifice and resurrection. Poems such as "Barley Feed," "Red Head," "Field," and "Song" evoke the catastrophic defeat at Catraeth, with lines like "Only three have returned from the battle's rage" mirroring the sparse survivors in ancient accounts. Yet elegy transforms into reparation: The red flower symbolizes the perennial return of life from death..Deeper in, celebrations of creation-"Angel Standing in the Sun," "The Branch," "The Green Tree," rooted in eternal streams, counter winter's frost of war. Rivers over stones, blooming hearts, planetary conjunctions, biblical allusions (Proverbs' Wisdom, Paradise Lost's amaranth) with later pieces like "Nightingale" (a Spenserian stanza epic of love, underworld descent, and Persephone-like renewal) and "Banquet of God" (a prophetic vision of apocalyptic judgment and feast) add a richly allusive myth..
north along the Irish Sea of Bangor and beyond.
