Anne Stevenson (with Michael Farley): On "Holocaust"
When we come to the end of Holocaust (granted, it is a poem, not a play) we want to find a place to be sick. No poet has ever written a book so nakedly shocking, so blatantly calculated to make us feel that the Nazi persecution of the Jews can never be fictionalized or abstracted into "literature." One marvels at the courage Reznikoff must have drawn upon to write it. Yet it is because Holocaust is written--every word and fact of it--that it is believable.