Poet Valzhyna Mort’s collection Music for the Dead and Resurrected is a beautiful collection of poetry that draws on Mort’s experience growing up in a communist country to explore themes of homeland, death, music, and religion. Her writing utilizes dots as stanza breaks to really disconnect her thoughts in a single poem, though they are still connected, and thus forces readers to reckon with each individual line on its own, before connecting it to the rest of the poem.

Homeland is a huge theme within her poetry. Growing up in the communist country of Belarus, Mort’s experience with nationalism and propaganda are vastly different from a majority of people’s experience, and her poetry provides a unique outlook into the emotional trauma of such a time. For example, she states, “this is why we do not build barns anymore. We build the Palace of the Republic. The Palace of the Republic won’t let us be burned inside it” (Self Portrait with the Palace of the Republic, 5). Her country was wartorn when she grew up in it, and her poetry reflects that. Further, her country does not have a clean, heroic history either, and she acknowledges this: “One by one, streets introduced themselves / with the names of national / murderers” (Bus Stops: Ars Poetica, 10).  Yet despite Belarus’s cloudy history, Mort chooses to see hope in her country, hope for the future. She writes, “Under the moth-eaten snow / my motherland has good bones” (An Attempt at Genealogy, 19). Despite everything, Mort ultimately comes to the conclusion that despite her childhood, and the trauma’s of growing up in a post-soviet country, and all the baggage that came with it, that she would choose to be hopeful, to envision a brighter future for Belarus. Underneath the streets named after murderers, her motherland had good bones. I find this message to be quiet beautiful, and a resonating theme throughout the book: that despite everything, Mort chooses to have hope.

Themes of death are another large part of the book; Mort uses imagery around bones, graveyards, and more to describe her life. Death is ever-present in her narrative: “Yzefa, after loud, theatrical farewells, / is dead,” she writes about someone she knew who died (Little Songs, 29). It is said matter-of-factly as though death is so common that the narrator does not bat an eye. It is not just death, but general morbid imagery that Mort uses. For example, she writes “braid your bones neatly. / braid your bones bravely.  finger comb your bones / into neat braids / in our woods, ravines, fields, swamps” (An Attempt at Genealogy, 23). The bones of the dead surround her poetry, are ever-present in the imagery she uses, and despite all that, Mort maintains a message of hope throughout it all. Even when discussing death, she writes, “But under that roof, folded / like a dead man’s hands over the house, / we still live” (Little Songs, 31). It is true—despite the gruesomeness and misery and cold of growing up in post-Soviet Belarus, of growing up surrounded by death, Mort is still here. People still live, walking on the graves of their ancestors, carrying on their names. It is a poignant reminder that hope is never truly lost.

Mort’s poetry is covered with religious undertones that truly display the beauty and sorrow of her youth, and reflects the themes of her book. My favorite line in the book is “How did we scare God / out of this place? / With things that God fears” (Ode to Branca, 55). I think it really emphasizes just how godless Mort feels her childhood was, and makes her hopeful messages stand out all the more since they exist in a place that God is scared away from. She continues to use religious imagery in regards to Cain—“I’ve always preferred Cain…. I prefer apples that rule / far from the tree” (Genesis, 32). Cain kills his brother in the Bible, but Mort still prefers him, perhaps because we know who he is. Perhaps because Cain does not attempt to be God like Belarus tried to mimic the USSR, Mort shows a preference for her homeland, her Cain. Or perhaps I read too much into it—for me, the imagery rings strong regardless.

The final, everpresent note throughout her poetry is a musical note; the book is, after all, called Music for the Dead and Resurrected. Mort uses musical imagery to give a haunting, beautiful melody to her experience, and truly tie the entire book together. Without music, this book would not exist. Where did she learn it? “Children, we learned rhythm / from the piss stains and hiccup of elevators, / from the broken blinking of traffic lights” (A Song for a Raised Voice and a Screwdriver, 72). Musical rhythm and meaning are derived from something seemingly ugly and common, like broken traffic lights and piss stains. They are something we ignore, do not want to think about, but it is this dislike of them that ties them together, ultimately. There are overtones of violence as well: “Your grandson plays a string quartet / with a pocket knife” (Little Song for a Pocket Knife, 27). Perhaps most obvious is the fact that many of her poems are titled “Song for” or “Music For” in the title. Even in the musical imagery, Mort’s message of hope remains; she writes “Music which, over accordion keys, / unclenches the fist of ancestry, / loosens fingers into rose petals” (Rose Pandemic, 35). Music unclenches the tight noose of communism that ensnares her country, the heavy shroud of her ancestors’ wishes and deaths that lies over her, and creates rose petals from nothing, elaborates on beauty that might have been hard to see. 

Mort’s constant message of hope in the face of hardship is what makes Music for the Dead and Resurrected an amazing book and ultimately, a truly stupendous read. You cannot help but be lifted by her emotions and drawn into her experiences, no matter how different they may seem from your own. If I was to pull from Mort’s poetic style, I would want to use her method of line breaks, wherein she physically separates her poems into sections with dots. I think that it could make longer poetry of mine better, or be good for storytelling with poetry. I think that my favorite theme of hers is also how she uses music to tie the whole book together; I also want to try tying poems together with overarching themes that only loosely connect them, but still make them whole. Ultimately, it is music that ties together themes of homeland, death, and religion into something hurt and bloody, yet beautifully whole.