Alex Vartan Gubbins’ Decoding the Hill of Dead Kings: A New Voice Makes Its Mark

to rocket fire, let us pray (…)

For Armen and Nane of Hadrut, who’ll never step into

the orchard they planted their first tree in together,

placed lavash over the shoulders and danced kochari,

heard their daughter cry together for the first time, let us pray (…)

For Vartan, whose grapevines may not know his hands for another harvest,

let us pray.”

Gubbins has every right to grapple with the recent trauma of Artsakh, but setting questions of content aside, this poem might also benefit from a more inventive approach to rhythm and imagery. Here, for instance, the refrain “let us pray” feels somewhat facile, as does the catalogue of Armenian cultural markers (church, lavash, apricots, kochari). The repetition of historical material is not in itself the issue; what matters is reworking it with sufficient originality. Lori Bedikian (Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body) and Shahe Mankerian (History of Forgetfulness) have recently written compelling work on the Lebanese Civil War and its aftershocks, though they are by no means the first poets to tackle this subject matter.

In other places, Gubbins displays an original and lyrical voice, as in “The Dead Grenade,” where he writes playfully:

“I break open a pomegranate, choose blackening reds.

Stuck to the hive-like pulp. Pluck them one by one.

The unpucker from skin is like a lover’s pull from lips,

when divots are made, when gums feel the sucking cool

between teeth, when fingers learn the weight of dead kernels.”

The alliteration of “pluck” with “unpucker,” together with the deft use of the latter verb’s nominalized form, pleases both eye and ear. “Between teeth, when fingers learn the weight of dead kernels” stands out for its striking imagery.

And then there is the love poem to his wife, “Isn’t It Only Stone?”, which beautifully captures fragments of time and place:

“I want to pour the sunset into my water bottle, pass it to her,

tell her I’ll always put poems about sailing into the seas beneath

her morning glass of orange juice. (…)

But now she stares ahead. Sunrays in pupils.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter. The want to make

isn’t what the world needs. The rays between us are

what matter. The whispers before we sleep.”

Interestingly, it is the sequence of poems on the couple’s return to Michigan that proves most effective. Rendered in a prose-poetic style, the language aligns closely with themes of pride and survival against the cold, barren winter landscape that has been home to the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) people since time immemorial. This effect may stem from Gubbins’ greater critical distance from this material. Whatever the reason, these passages vividly convey a sense of oneness between human life and the natural world. Here, his descriptions of the Upper Peninsula’s stark terrain become powerful and elegiac. In “Travelogue #1,” using simple declarative sentences, the writer seems to merge effortlessly into the surrounding water:

“Crossing into the Upper Peninsula, the pine trees block out the moon, the light slips through the trunks onto the road. We stop at Brule River to hear the rushing water. On the other side of the river at a clean tributary is fresh watercress. I walk in my jeans across the current, rocks and sticks at my feet. I bag chunks of watercress into an empty shirt tied at my arms. When I emerge, my calves are numb.”

Never have I read a description of watercress harvesting rendered with such quiet, memorable elegance. Later in the same poem, his homeland also becomes a subject of well-rendered wonder, as the Upper Peninsula and the Georgian Armenian region of Javakhk (which he spells Javakhq) merge in memory and imagination:

“I am back in the field now in Javakhq as we drive through the pine forest nearing Lake Superior. The field and forest become a single feeling.”

The passage concludes with two powerful sensory images — one visual and one olfactory: “I sketch with my eyes. The pine scent enters the field.”

In “Into the Forest,” the couple goes to live in the woods among Ojibwe as they await the birth of a child. Here the reader feels drawn into a dark, beautiful, and almost magical world:

“Our neighbor’s mother is Anishinaabe, which makes him Anishinaabe, which most people know as Ojibwe, the language he uses for the land dips with the environment, madwezigaashkaa heard something far off in the waves, as we lie in bed at night ignoring the waiting the ice croaks in the eaves, aashkaa aashkaa, I whisper.”

By implicitly comparing Anishinaabe and Armenian history, these entries invite readers to move beyond purely nationalist discourse—as an increasing number of queer and young leftist Armenian scholars are doing—and to interrogate the role of capital and racial supremacy in the global dynamics of colonization and ethnic cleansing.

Overall, Gubbins has produced a layered and welcome first collection with an arresting title. While some poems feel more fully realized than others, the book reveals a poet of promise. If he continues to develop both his formal range and thematic concerns, this poetic cocoon may indeed give rise to something impressive.

Decoding the Hill of Dead Kings is available for purchase from Wayne State University, HFS Books, Dussman, and Amazon.