About the Book
The poems in After the Aftermath, a finalist in the 2010 Oklahoma Book Awards for poetry, reflect the life Renata Treitel lived in Italy under the far-reaching fascist regime. She endured the challenges of life on a continent tangled in war, and these experiences from her childhood have shaped all of her poetry. She recently spent a year in Germany reflecting on her own past and the history of the country, which invited her to reconsider what nationality and displacement, themes she deals with in After the Aftermath, mean to her so many years later.
In one of her poems, “Karl’s Peace,” Treitel focuses the reader’s attention on the sounds and the smells that drive people away in the same manner that bombs do, likening a fleeing crowd to a runny nose. Her words are jarring in their honesty and beautiful in sentiment, and the reader will never tire of reciting them to others or whispering them to themselves.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-933918-41-9
