Ghost Maps: Poems for Carl Hruska

Ghost Poems for Carl Hruska is Erin Noteboom’s remarkable debut collection of poetry. Based on the recollections of a World War II veteran who asks to never have his name put on anything, Ghost Maps introduces us to the intimacies of war with poems sharp as fragments of metal, and soft as falling snow. With a voice that belongs not to the veteran that answered her questions, nor quite to herself, Noteboom pulls forward images of war, following the pulse of the seasons. We read of a hand, unattached to a body and mistaken for a glove; the woman left at home, with German POW’s shoveling snow from her roof; and a soldier stumbling into a beehive. Poems pass through fall and winter, until, in summer, we follow our narrator home. The collection then traces the rest of his life to his later days when he meets with the ’lady researcher’ who collects his stories. Ghost Maps will acquaint readers with ghosts never to be forgotten, in a book that marks the entry of a highly talented new poet.