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Alondra Press, LLC
Rhyme of the Fall of Berlin
Rhyme of the Fall of Berlin
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Henry Hollenbaugh began his mock epic poem in 1985 and completed it in 1987. The period of time from its completion to its publication by Alondra Press represents twenty-three years futilely spent in his search for a publisher.
Hollenbaugh spent his childhood and youth in the San Joaquin Valley of California and the town of Firebaugh. While in the army he constantly reminisced about his home town, and this led his friends and others to call him Henry Firebaugh. In time he came to adopt the name himself, and he therefore ascribes the narration of Rhyme of the Fall of Berlin to “Jonathan Firebaugh.”
The date of initiation of his poem explains the lines “Where well over forty years ago/Those desperate armies fought….” and the lines,
spoken by the ghost of Hollenbaugh’s friend Karinen,
“Perhaps you might see her sitting
-- Eighty-eight now she must be --
There on the porch in her rocking chair,
Staring eastward vacantly . . .
In the year of 2010 Karinen’s mother would have been some 112 years old.
In other lines and stanzas Henry Hollenbaugh reveals his radical liberal bent, such as in the words much used by a former U.S. president and attributed by Hollenbaugh to Adolf Hitler: “That evil empire,” and “This nation will always stand tall….” and his references to the punishment received in Hell by a thinly veiled J. Edgar Hoover, as well as Charles de Gaulle and other anti-communist icons. At one time Hollenbaugh was mercilessly hounded by what he calls “fascist elements,” a persecution which he shifts onto the shoulders of one of his friends whom he meets at the antechamber of Hell, Isaiah Schermerhorn.
Hollenbaugh pokes fun at himself in his pretensions that his rhyme will cause the dust of Milton and Keats to churn in their graves with envy. But whatever its faults may be, Rhyme of the Fall of Berlin is a euphonic and entertaining mock epic poem. As counterpoint to its occasional forced rhyme and poetic lapses, it contains many a stirring stanza, such as the one beginning with,
Von Paulus had crossed the Quiet Don,
Where the silvery whitefish leap,
North of the sea that washes the land
Where Helius was said to keep….
and,
“Wafted in on the northwest breeze,
Over Stalingrad it floated,
Over the bomb churned, smoking debris
And the corpses, stiff and bloated.
Many other such stanzas redeem Hollenbaugh’s poem from its sundry minor faults. The greatest of its faults, in the eyes of many a neo-fascist and conservative, is perhaps the poet’s glorification of Russia’s role in the war.
Other books by Henry Hollenbaugh published by Alondra Press are the fiction novels Rio San Pedro and Nessus The Centaur. Alondra Press is considering the publication of another of his novels,The Mosquito Shore.
Pennelope Aletras-Leight
Hollenbaugh spent his childhood and youth in the San Joaquin Valley of California and the town of Firebaugh. While in the army he constantly reminisced about his home town, and this led his friends and others to call him Henry Firebaugh. In time he came to adopt the name himself, and he therefore ascribes the narration of Rhyme of the Fall of Berlin to “Jonathan Firebaugh.”
The date of initiation of his poem explains the lines “Where well over forty years ago/Those desperate armies fought….” and the lines,
spoken by the ghost of Hollenbaugh’s friend Karinen,
“Perhaps you might see her sitting
-- Eighty-eight now she must be --
There on the porch in her rocking chair,
Staring eastward vacantly . . .
In the year of 2010 Karinen’s mother would have been some 112 years old.
In other lines and stanzas Henry Hollenbaugh reveals his radical liberal bent, such as in the words much used by a former U.S. president and attributed by Hollenbaugh to Adolf Hitler: “That evil empire,” and “This nation will always stand tall….” and his references to the punishment received in Hell by a thinly veiled J. Edgar Hoover, as well as Charles de Gaulle and other anti-communist icons. At one time Hollenbaugh was mercilessly hounded by what he calls “fascist elements,” a persecution which he shifts onto the shoulders of one of his friends whom he meets at the antechamber of Hell, Isaiah Schermerhorn.
Hollenbaugh pokes fun at himself in his pretensions that his rhyme will cause the dust of Milton and Keats to churn in their graves with envy. But whatever its faults may be, Rhyme of the Fall of Berlin is a euphonic and entertaining mock epic poem. As counterpoint to its occasional forced rhyme and poetic lapses, it contains many a stirring stanza, such as the one beginning with,
Von Paulus had crossed the Quiet Don,
Where the silvery whitefish leap,
North of the sea that washes the land
Where Helius was said to keep….
and,
“Wafted in on the northwest breeze,
Over Stalingrad it floated,
Over the bomb churned, smoking debris
And the corpses, stiff and bloated.
Many other such stanzas redeem Hollenbaugh’s poem from its sundry minor faults. The greatest of its faults, in the eyes of many a neo-fascist and conservative, is perhaps the poet’s glorification of Russia’s role in the war.
Other books by Henry Hollenbaugh published by Alondra Press are the fiction novels Rio San Pedro and Nessus The Centaur. Alondra Press is considering the publication of another of his novels,The Mosquito Shore.
Pennelope Aletras-Leight
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