the steam sequence

“Confronting Auschwitz, all...thought is fragmented.” – Emil Fackenheim

This epigram, which begins Carly Sachs’ the steam sequence, is our departure point. What follows unfurls slowly, in glimpses, seen only through wisps of smoke and memory. Fragmentation is Carly Sachs’ form and in her hands, a vehicle of powerful conveyance. Most of this book length sequence appears as airy broken phrases that spread down the page with only a few words on each line.

before he came

to her

he dipped his fingers in honey

her sweet

brute

But occasionally, the fragmentation even occurs within words:

no one would be [left a]

li[e]ve

if she

spoke

This creates a haunting, slow revelation to Sachs’ work. Each phrase is painful to the speaker, each word caught briefly before being spoken. Once one begins to gather Sachs’ fragments, the drive of the narrative is revealed. This is the story of a Jewish woman who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. A woman who was raped by the soldiers there. A woman who lives with this reality everyday and is reminded everyday. A kettle boils. She draws the bath. In the steam, the fog of memory clears and the events of her life become naked and clear, stated in sharp relief by Sachs’ exact and careful diction.

in the kettle

a baby

as the woman turns off the gas

this half turn of the wrist

how easy

she thinks

the cry

is unmistakable

the tea is ready

but the woman’s child

her child is dead

Sachs intertwining of imagery creates multiple levels of metaphor for her images as steam, memory, and the figure of the survivor become one.

the mind

a window

outside inside

the woman the wind

the kettle screaming the water

drawn a window the woman

outside screaming the wind inside the kettle

a

window

drawn The subject matter is not taken lightly or overly abstracted—Sachs knows the power of a true moment. Portions of the poem are more straightforward in their narration and this is where Sachs’ deep involvement and research of her subject matter shines.

They let certain women keep their hair,

those were the soldiers’ women,

always the ones most recently off the train

who were given soap and water

then taken naked to a concrete room

where the soldiers would shove the heads

of their rifles inside them.

It’s hard to read this work—or any work on the holocaust, really—and not compare it to what has come before. While it may be too early to compare the steam sequence with the work of Celan and Reznikof, one hears echoes. The book most reminded me of Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl. The striking fact is that in this book, Sachs has described a particular tragedy within yet outside of the generalities that we commonly accept about the holocaust. Both in form and narrative, the steam sequence lends understanding to the incessant reliving of individual trama.

I’ll end with a line from the steam sequence’s other epigram from Primo Levi’s Shema, “Consider that this had been:” Sachs reminds us that it was not just 6 million Jews who died in the ghettos and concentration camps. There were the others. Those who suffered the most grave abuses and lived. And all, those who died and those who survived, were more than just statistics, they were real.

- Dan Brady