Resonance: Fear, Dread and Love in the Crucible of Army Life
by Marc Marin 2024
What were any of us doing 20-some years ago? In our memories, are those years alive with sensation? Cloaked in sorrow? Nearly forgotten?
For Marc Marin, the author of “Resonance: Fear, Dread and Love in the Crucible of Army Life,” those years continue to speak insistently. Formerly a journalist, now a public school teacher at Cortland High School, Marc Marin has given his years in the military a stage, a voice and a mic in his first book.
The book is a careful quilt of fiction, poetry, letters, diary entries and news. Warning: strong language and some tough scenes. Evidence of war and what it does to all of us takes shape on every page.
Particularly powerful are the poems. A poem titled “Buried” turns a light on in a cave of memory to efficiently catalogue war and its many tools and changing faces. Marin began writing the book in 2020 with this poem. Another poem titled “Questions” is shorthand for feelings that every veteran, every veteran’s family, and perhaps anyone who watches the news, will recognize.
Marin describes the love of family and the significance of faith interwoven with those events and those years. He writes movingly of his parents, his older brother and his uncle as both motivating and healing forces in his life. The poem titled “Dog Tags” is about family members and U.S. wars. It is as vivid as a slide show.
Marin describes when he and some colleagues met several young Iraqi boys in a gym in Baghdad. The photo that accompanies that story shows a group of men and boys smiling in easy poses. He notes the solemn expression of one boy who wears an NBA T-shirt. The boys would be in their mid-30s now, and Marin wonders what happened to them, where are they now and whether they are still alive.
The author has a unique way of honestly understanding himself as he was at a much younger age. The writing is richly varied and full of energy. This book has been written by a man who knows without question that life is a gift. The book is available now through Amazon and through the Finger Lakes Library System at the Cortland Library and Phillips Library in Homer.
Lynn Olcott lives in Homer.
