Review of Perla Kantarjian’s “You Must Become Field”

I am not a poet, but I know storytelling. And perhaps that is why I was so struck by the extraordinary storytelling in Perla Kantarjian’s “You Must Become Field.” A collection of 75 poems spanning the Armenian Genocide to the present, written with the intimacy that often feels more like a memoir than a traditional poetry collection. Readers of many genres will find a point of connection: historical fiction, memoir, mythology and folklore, romance, young adults and contemporary literature. It initially felt like a “who’s who of Armenian history,” with intellectuals and literary figures arrested on April 24, 1915, and figures such as Henry Morgenthau Sr., Viscount Bryce, Arnold Toynbee and Raphael Lemkin, whose documentation and language helped the world understand what happened. The famous names give way to bodies, families, women, young people, memory and displacement. But this isn’t a history book. Kantarjian’s use of first-person voice throughout a century of history lets the reader experience it as if they were there. Whether it is inherited trauma or not, we are all those who experienced 1915. Again and again, Kantarjian places the extraordinary beside the unimaginable, and somehow neither diminishes the other. Kantarjian isn’t suggesting that one reality makes the other look frivolous. She shows how people keep living, falling in love, caring about how they look, eating, celebrating, posting photographs, even as history happens around them. I noticed the recurring red imagery, especially the pomegranate. Ordinarily, it evokes Armenian symbolism, abundance, fertility, seeds and life. But throughout the collection, red repeatedly becomes blood, creating a contradiction between death and fertility. Admittedly, I didn’t fully understand the title or the poem “You Must Become Field” until I read the Notes. There, Kantarjian explains that after the Genocide, Armenian women carried the expectation to replace the dead. Suddenly, the meaning of “field” became clear. A field is fertile. It grows. It produces new life. Kantarjian writes, “Duty lines up and awaits your womb. There is death seated between our teeth. You must submit to the chrysanthemum, the rosehip, and the wild violet. You must swallow the hawthorn whole, thorn and seed. Write back what the rifle erased.” That final line resonated most deeply with me as a storyteller. Reproduction is one way of refusing erasure. Storytelling is another. In Kantarjian’s hands, poetry itself becomes an act of repopulation — not literally with bodies, but with names, memories, voices, language and stories. Kantarjian’s collection refuses to allow genocide to become something safely contained in history. The displacement of approximately 120,000 Armenians from Artsakh and the death of 3,825 soldiers make the themes of homeland, erasure and forced displacement painfully contemporary. She recalls a teacher pointing to a map of the nine countries that refuse to recognize 1915 as genocide and the 27 that do. She states, “These countries acknowledge. These countries remember. You — the future generation — carry this torch forward.” Words matter because erasure often begins with language. Return to that powerful line: “Write back what the rifle erased.” Because the best way to read this collection will differ for each reader, here is what I find works best for me. First, I read all 75 poems in one sitting and marked my observations to capture for this review. Then I went back. This time I read the poems with markings, slowly absorbing the words and visualizing images. Next, I will go back and read the poems without markings. No matter your approach, this isn’t a book to read once and put on a shelf. It is a book to revisit, share, read aloud, and discuss. Certain passages should be quoted and returned to. And my greatest tip — do skip ahead to read Kantarjian’s Notes that provide a useful contextual perspective. Finally, I will take Kantarjian’s opening words literally. “I will feed you fragments because that’s all I have. Gather what you can.” I gathered what I could. Then I went back and gathered more. I suspect I will keep doing so each time I return to “You Must Become Field,” and hope you will too.

Review of Perla Kantarjian’s “You Must Become Field”

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Victoria Atamian Waterman

This story is FREE for you...

Victoria Atamian Waterman

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