Generations: Lullaby with Incendiary Device, the Nazi Patrol, and How It Is That We

In the third Tribus by Etruscan Press, we present work by poets of three generations: William Heyen, H. L. Hix, and Dante Di Stefano. It was Di Stefano's new book, Lullaby with Incendiary Device, which inspired this tribute to three generations. Lullaby is deeply immersed in a soon-to-be-realized future, in which Di Stefano's daughter faces an array of 21st century challenges. Upon receiving this submission, we came to think about the concerns that have shaped the poetry of Heyen and Hix, our two flagship poets, and we decided that a Tribus, joining work which has defined Etruscan over the past twenty years, would be the best way to advance the dialogue. For the last half century, Heyen's poetry has explored world history, from Nature, to Native Americans, to the Holocaust and the atom bomb, the Iraq Wars, to the British Royals. His driving, eclectic force is unmatched in contemporary poetry. In this book, Heyen presents another entry into his Holocaust opus, The Nazi Patrol. H. L. Hix's work is also inextricably involved with the world, as seen in a recent collection, American Anger, which explores the psychology of rage underneath recent political turmoil, and God Bless, adapted from the speeches of George W. Bush and the tirades of Osama Bin Laden. Yet, his work also turns inward, creating new forms to join the world and the inner life. This theme is most prominent here, in How It Is That We. So, three generations look backward, forward, and inward. But chronology is not the most salient feature of this book of generations. Presented here are three books which thread through our sense of identity, being both deeply personal and also somehow liberated from the narrative of biography. Spare, profuse, elusive--these poems reveal how we are versions of one another while also that there never will be another. They present originality through which the prime echoes anew. The sensibility behind Generations is perhaps best expressed in a recent letter from H. L. Hix. "To live by poetry. Which of course I want to read in more than one sense; live robustly and fully by means of poetry; order one's life according to values derived from poetry; live in proximity to poetry."