The items under discussion were a magazine article and a small book of poetry. The magazine article was from a quarterly put out by the South Dakota State history press. Writer Sallie Ketcham wrote about Rose Wilder Lane's experience with the Near East Relief program after the end of World War I. The article is entitled "It Was In Armenia That I Learned Fear - Rose Wilder Lane and the Armenian Genocide".
The poetry book, titled "Murmurs of Muse", was written by Krikor Keljik, the great uncle of Tom & Mark Keljik, using the pen name K. Devrish.
First, we discussed the magazine article. Rose Wilder Lane is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House On the Prairie collection of children's books. Rose was also an author and helped her mother with the writing and editing of the Little House books, as well as writing several books of her own. During the years during and after World War I she traveled extensively in Europe and the Near East and sent articles back to various newspapers and magazines. She gave first hand accounts of the death and devastation that she observed, both in the Balkans and in the Near East.
Tom mentioned that Rose Wilder Lane commented on the level of education and wealth of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire when compared to the general population. Tom pointed out that that may have been true for some of the Armenians, but that the vast majority were farmers or sheep herders and did not have that much wealth.
Everyone agreed that the article was very worthwhile to read and we thanked Azad for making us aware of it and Nairy and Terry for scanning it and making the copy available to us.
Krikor Keljik suffered the death of his daughter Sossy Armenia Keljik just before Christmas in 1937. Many of the poems in the book were written to express his grief over Sossy's death. Many of the other poems express his wonder and appreciation of Minnesota and the U.S. as his new home after leaving Armenia. Tom said that Krikor attended Euphrates College in the Ottoman Empire (?).
Francis loved the book and mentioned several of the poems that he really liked, such as "A Last Lullaby". My personal favorite is "In Itaska Park". Other members of the group commented on their favorites, also.
Francis commented on how the poetry was not written to rhyme. Andrea talked about different types of poetry, some of which have verses in which the words match with rhythm rather than with rhyme.
Tom mentioned that he didn't know that Krikor knew the language well enough to have written the book in English and that it's possible that the book was written in Armenian and then translated into English. He doesn't know who would have done the translation.
In any case, we all loved the book. Some interesting facts about the book are that Krikor self-published it (it identifies itself as being published by Devrish Press of Saint Paul, Minnesota.) It was printed in a small 5-1/2-inch by 7-inch pamphlet format only 52 pages long. The back cover lists the price as $1.00. The only copy that I have seen is in the ACOM library and was donated to it by Massis Yeterian.
For October the book will be "Children of Armenia" by Michael Bobelian. We will be meeting on October 15th, probably through Zoom. I hope to see you all then.
Leroy