There are many ways to fight evil.  The way that comes quickest to mind is through military action.  Good forces fight evil forces.  Yes: even to the point of war.  

There are many ways to fight evil.  One way — that doesn't come so quickly to mind — is through literary action. Good forces fight evil forces. Yes: even a poem can do battle.

Albert Heaton, now 88, was an 18-year-old U.S. Army soldier when he fought the Nazis during World War II.  He fought in direct combat — nearly losing his life several times.  And he faced the grim responsibility of overseeing the proper burial of thousands of corpses which the Germans had left in open mass graves when fleeing Dachau before Allied troops liberated the concentration camp in April 1945.

Please read Kevin Heaton's page.  And help him thank and honor his father, Albert Heaton, for his extraordinary heroism and compassion in the face of unimaginable adversity.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the seminal Russian poet, also fought the Nazis — who had murdered
thirty thousand people in two days at Babi Yar.  But the poet fought them more than two decades after the infamous incident.  Yevtushenko's words brought the mass killing to public attention — after the facts had been hidden for twenty years.  Babi Yar is, without a doubt, among the most powerful poems of all time.

Please read Domenic J. Scopa's page.  And thank him for giving us a stunning new English translation of Yevtushenko's world-changing poem.

No. This is not an easy entrance into the new year.  Not what you might expect from a poetry journal. But Verse-Virtual is not an ordinary journal.  We are a community.  We work together to make this a meaningful experience. 

At the start of this year we do the right thing.  As Albert Heaton and Yevgeny Yevtushenko did the right thing.  A good place to begin.