Shadow War

Starting on April 22, 2002, and concluding on June 16, 2002, Louis Daniel Brodsky’s Shadow War, Volume Four traces the primary sources of terrorism that erupted in America on September 11: Israel, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. These poems describe, in bold detail, the desperation of Palestinians and Israelis trying to survive what appears to be an intractable knot of hatred and retaliation. Suicide bombers, demonstrating the depths of radical depravity, are at the center of many of these pieces, as is the Israeli military, frustrated by its inability to deter them. The specter of nuclear war looms as well, in vivid poetic accounts of the political and religious tensions assailing India and Pakistan throughout their struggle to resolve the fate of Kashmir. Brodsky also examines the fledgling government of Afghanistan, as Hamid Karzai strives, with the help of the United States, to keep civil war from regaining control of his country.