All Comments on 'Inhumanity: Kosovo, 1999'

I'm glad you're back, Lauren and glad to comment here. There is just no way to explain how some justify ethnic cleansing; it is one of Satan's Special Crimes, to be sure. This is a wonderful piece- Thanks!

Skillfully handled subject, I'd say. At times a detached tone as abstracts as te horrors reduced to rafdar shapes, at times as cutting as if placed in the middle of the destruction.

The mid section interlude though seems to me almost non-sequitir. Probably because the reference is lost on me, whatever you're alluding to, is siomething I've never heard of, not can't be able to look up.

Enlighten me?

I would agree with Liar on the whole because I too couldn't understand the mid section. I also thought the last four lines a little melodramatic, slightly out of kilter with the earlier starker image,80/100.

Thank you both. The mid section interlude is a quote from William Blake's book "An Island in the Moon". The part I was expecting to make this not so non-sequitur, other than the previous references to Blake, The Island in the Moon and Doctor Clash, was "Musicians should have / A pair of very good ears, / And long fingers and thumbs, / And not like clumsy bears" as I thought it related well to the concept of precision-bombs being dropped from high above.

for a poem talking about modern mechanized weapons systems.

At first the choppy rhythm of the very short lines bothered me, but on further reflection, I think it is very appropriate as it evokes the frenetic nervousness of being in a war zone.

My first impression of the Blake quotes was that they were satirical imitations of children's songs, placed there to give a kind of Brechtian commentary on war. I think they are effective, if a bit confusing, even if you don't know the reference (which I doubt anyone would, as it isn't a well-known work by Blake).

I really like the lines "dropping on earth / distractedly / missing their targets / while bodies disincarnate bit by bit".

The closing is effective, if perhaps a touch didactic.

I'd probably give it a 4.5 if I could, mainly because I think parts of it (e.g., the embedded Blake quotation) is a little obscure. But hell, let me round it up to 5.