SOURCE: "Inspired by War," in Detroit Free Press, Section G, May 22, 1994, p. 8.

[In the following review, Walker favorably assesses The Angel of History, briefly comparing it to The Country between Us and noting Forché's focus on World War II, survival, and remembrance.]

Carolyn Forche's second book, The Country Between Us, became one of the most talked-about books of poetry of the 1980s. The heart of it is a group of poems about the war in El Salvador. Forche wrote with haunting precision about the cruelty of that war and the questions of conscience it should have raised for all Americans.

In The Angel of History, Forche again bears witness to the shattering of lives. But her technique has evolved magnificently. In her 1981 work, she transformed suffering into the musical, unifying shape of the lyric poem. In The Angel of History, she has done something more challenging.

This...