Habry, or The End of Snow, by Helen Degen Cohen
Habry, the name for blue cornflowers that grow along the edges of wheat fields in Poland. Habry, the poem from which the latest collection of poems by Helen Degen Cohen takes its title. Cohen writes about the holocaust that she and her parents survived. Her story is shattering and inspiring – her poems are too. Intensely personal and completely universal at once, Cohen’s poems juxtapose the external forces of destruction that bear down on her family, people and country, with the domestic joys that she knew before the war and her intense love of nature. In this way, remarkably, Cohen transmits a passion for living through her art, while never turning away from the unbearable. One of the many reasons that this collection is impossible to put down once you begin it.
Habry, or The End of Snow, is available at local booksellers and through Puddin’Head Press. Click here to access.