ARMENIAN TOWN
A poetry anthology, featuring:
Paul Aloojian, James Baloian, Y. Stephan Bulbulian,
Ronald L. Dzerigian, Michael Krekorian, and
Brenda Najimian-Magarity
With a Forward by Dickran Kouymjian
William Saroyan Society, 70 pages, $14.95

Armenian Town, the Harbinger of an Armenian American Poetry Renaissance

Reviewed by Stephen T. Barile

      The William Saroyan Society of Fresno has embarked on a rich literary journey, drawing from the deep wellspring of poetry in Fresno by Armenian-American writers, with the publication of Armenian Town, a poetry anthology featuring six current and former Fresno-based poets. The first-of-its-kind collection features poets who have gathered literary acclaim, both regionally and worldwide. Young and old, the poets in this anthology touch on issues and emotions central to the Armenian diaspora; assimilation, myth, ritual, the ancient homeland, and bewilderment in the modern world.

      Armenian Town features the work of James Baloian, an award-winning poet of great stature and wide acclaim. Baloian, who, with poet David Kherdian, published the epochal and seminal 1970 anthology, Down at the Santa Fe Depot, 20 Fresno Poets. The book defined what has come to be known as the 'Fresno School of Poetry.' In his poem Fresno Indians, included in Armenian Town, Baloian captures the unsettling essence of Armenian's struggles for assimilation in the strange lands of Fresno:

They called Armenians 'Fresno Indians'
with our hollowed eyes and eagle-beaked noses
but my grandmother said
they called us 'Starving black Armenians . . .first

      Baloian's poems evoke Armenian struggles with a mind toward the horrific atrocities perpetrated against 1.5 million Armenians in a genocide that not only coined the term, but also forced the evacuation and diaspora of the world's first Christian nation.

      The book provides a generous mix of Baloian's poems, both eclectic and direct, anchoring Armenian Town as a unique specimen and harbinger of the emerging Armenian-American poetry renaissance, in much the same way as ...Santa Fe Depot defined the Fresno poetry movement.

      Michael Krekorian, author and prose poet, guides the reader through the streets of Fresno, California, in search of The Notorious Atheist of Fresno. A lengthy prose poem, Krekorian's epic-piece captures the charm and befuddlement faced by the cigar-chomping, Armenian hero, General Antranik, transplanted into modern day Fresno. While Armenian's have cause to renounce God for supreme inequities bestowed upon them, as Krekorian points to, strengths and resiliency are founded in the vineyards and with close family ties that can surpass previous injustices, punctuating through the daily rhythms of life.

      Poet Y. Stephan Bulbulian captures the ethos of modern Armenian agrarian life in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California, first in his defining poem, Ararat Cemetery. There is a link and an everlasting moment of discovery among searchers, seekers and the Armenian names in the sacred ground of the graveyard. Agriculture, the bulwark of Armenian hope and prosperity in the New World is described in Bulbulian's The Art of Pruning Vines, combining a need for familiarity, and foresight with good hard work. The rhythm and music of an ancient Armenian ritual and a modern day tradition at a church picnic rollicks in Blessing of the Grapes:

When the band stops
organizers call names
over the loud-speaker
while religious men
look for conversation
with short women
in high-heels.

      Bulbulian's poetry turns to the mythological in the poem Anahid and the White Poplar Tree, a mythic princess and a soothsaying, surviving tree that predicts the day when 'evil will be defeated/ wickedness for all it's votaries/ shall be obliterated.'

      Paul Aloojian's poems are be-bop and down-to-earth at the same time. His poems speak to the difficulties of agricultural work (in 100-degree weather), in The Melon Pickers. He has an eye to the future and rewards at the end of the harvest season. Longing and desire, for a 'ballerina of a hidden harbor' in a pizza parlor, are found in Aloojian's poetry. He also employs the haiku form developing poetic pictures of agriculture:

Raisins dot the ground
spilling out of paper sacks
at the foot of the vineyard

His true passion is revealed in his poem, The Fine Art Theatre, a tribute to a dying movie house and dedicated to Italian poet, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

      Ronald L. Dzerigian, the youngest poet in the collection, presents poetry that sings in a concise language of love, in its various forms and manifestations. The most touching is his haunting poem, A Piece Is Missing, dedicated to his grandparents, where he conveys the impacts of the genocide two generations removed:

of the neglect
the simple horror
a piece is missing
since 1915

Dzerigian's poems are brisk, clear and demonstrate an ability to use language for effective poetic means. There is a subtle and wry humor that inhabits the spaces between the lines.

      The queen of this poetry anthology is Brenda Najimian-Magarity, a close friend and confidant of William Saroyan. Her brilliant poems are succinct, sparing and emblematic. In her poem, The Carpet Weavers, she weaves a pervasive Armenian sadness that collects in profundity with each successive line. Harsh realities of nature are interspersed in couplets in her outstanding and graceful poem, On the Eve of the Death of Carl Moosoolian. Najimian-Magarity brings this anthology to a well-chosen close with the ode to her sweet mother, in Zephyr. The book ends with her tribute to William Saroyan, to whom the book is dedicated ('In the time of our lives/ father to us all'), with the poem Exit Saroyan.

      Armenian Town, the first Armenian American poetry anthology of the new millennium, reveals that there is vitality and renewed energies from this neighborhood of town in the new poetry world. The poets are active and pursuing their unique expressions loud and clear. With the sounds emanating from the Fresno, California Armenian poetry scene, a new revival is in the works. Fresno, by its terrain and locale, seems an unlikely place to be a cultural happening--but it truly is. With the climate and fertile soil, Armenians settled here 120 years ago, making Fresno, at one time, the largest population of Armenians in diaspora, where they prospered and enriched the valley. Today, in 2001, third generation Armenians of Fresno, in exile, are clearly speaking, and enriching the culture with a new poetry renaissance.

1030 words

Armenian Town is available from:
The William Saroyan Society
Post Office Box 4606
Fresno, CA 93704-4604

Send checks or money orders for $14.95,
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