Gabriel Rosenstock
The Onslaught Press 2016
ISBN 9780993421785
Lth/Pgs 220
Gabriel Rosenstock’s Judgement Day is a collection of ekphrastic haiku in English and Irish in response to the collages of Karl Waldmann, a German Dadaist, now thought to be fictitious, whose anti-Nazi works appeared suddenly from behind the iron curtain after the reunification of Germany and drew a storm of attention from the art world. In this offering, Rosenstock continues to be foremost practitioner of ekphrastic haiku writing in English today. He also shows how ekphrastic haiku in book length format can move beyond the arena of one-off, lyrical responses to individual works of art to include autobiographical dimensions and themes of wider social concern, such as the re-emergence of right wing nationalism in many western countries today. So, a book of ekphrastic haiku with social relevance, consciously composed in response to one of the most ingenious art hoaxes of the 20th century! Something quite Zen going on here!
In his Afterword, Rosenstock reveals that his father was a young soldier in the armed forces of the Third Reich and as a consequence his response to the stark and thematically disturbing collages made by the enigma, Karl Waldmann, is a confrontation with aspects of his personal history.
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