Second Generation and Poetry

The concepts on which the Creating Memory initiative was based were concretized via the authors writing of poetry as a child of a survivor. This chapter surveys these concepts and shows how poetry, as a creative archetype, serves as a vehicle for creating memory. The specific examples of poems are a roadmap of the journey to creating memory that begins with a recognition of the void that exists, and continues on to a commitment to filling this void and creating a narrative despite the silence. This chapter shows how the memory created via poetry is an elegy that allows mourning and the reworking of the trauma that was passed on to the Second Generation.