Editor's Note Section
൪uartet - Spring Issue 2022 Volume 2 Issue 2
Poetry

Polly Brown
First Day at the Center
for the Study of War
Across the wide room, someone—
a man—says the impact of war
falls heaviest on women,
on wives of men who are
drinking themselves to sleep.
Mine is not the only sharp
intake of breath. And daughters.
Behind me, a woman’s voice, “But
we shine the armor, admire
the fine postures in the parade.”
And keep the body of suffering
buried. The tally of our own
breakage blank. Quick tears
thicken my throat. None of that
helped my father much.
൪
After I retired from teaching, one of my consolations became the summer writing workshops at Boston’s William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences. I wanted help
writing about my father’s war and its shadow, and found that—thunderclap!—from the first day,
from other daughters of veterans, from veterans of more recent wars, from visiting Vietnamese writers. When Fred Marchant, an especially helpful mentor, grinned at us all as he thought about
the pleasure of a new draft, I thought about my own slow, persistent approach to writing. I was
there not only to begin holding in some calm the pain and damage of my father’s war; I was there to honor the search for help from others. To keep writing my way around the corner, into a new
chapter.
—Polly Brown
൪uartet is an online poetry journal that features the work of women 50 and over.
To view our issues and submission guidelines, please visit www.quartetjournal.com.