Description
Nothing More to Lose
by Carolyn Martin
Nothing More to Lose is an intense, hair-raising, and hopeful account of one family’s resilience and faith. With poems based on Therese Kolbert Dieringer’s autobiography (My Life – Lived and Remembered: A journey across Hungary, Germany, and America), Carolyn Martin tracks the Kolbert family as they escape from Hungary in 1944, endure seven years of starvation and sickness in Germany, and arrive to a new life in America in 1952. Refugees who know neither the language nor landscape, they finally find some semblance of peace in their new home.
Martin knows her subject well. Dieringer is a family friend whose autobiography she edited in 2008. This intimate connection flows through powerful free verse poems that are filled with immediacy, insight, and compassion. Nothing More to Lose will open readers’ hearts and minds to the challenges that refugees in every era experience. It will also affirm the power poetry has to bear witness to that suffering and to the strength lying deep within the human spirit.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING…
It would seem that Carolyn Martin, the poet, and Therese Kolbert Dieringer, the persister, have become quantumly entangled—that state of essential being in which what happens to one happens to the other, what is felt by one is felt by the other, no matter any barriers of time or distance. How else to explain Therese’s experiences—surviving Nazis, spousal abuse, and being found by new, liberating love—expressed with such first-hand poetic beauty by Carolyn’s stirring and sterling lines? Alert Bohr and Planck! Martin and Dieringer have established the principle of poetic entanglement and extended it to us. Thomas Merton wrote, “We have all stood in front of that special image that sang to our soul.” Were he alive today and asked for an example, he would hand the person this chapbook.
~Wayne-Daniel Berard, co-founding editor of Soul-Lit: a journal of spiritual poetry
and author of The Realm of Blessing
In her introduction to Nothing More to Lose, Carolyn Martin says, “… even in the worst of times, people can be kind.” That idea buoys these poems that share a truly horrific tale of survival beginning in WWII Hungary. Through Martin’s deftly crafted images, we see into the life of Therese Kolbert Dieringer as she and her family flee Nazis, bombs, starvation, and more. The long journey that concludes in America brings Therese to a safer, but not necessarily less cruel, place. I had to take little breaks as I read these poems; that human beings are capable of causing so much pain is nearly unbearable. But Dieringer’s voice comes through each of Martin’s poems showing how kindness and cruelty co-exist in us all, and how true strength and resilience cannot be extinguished. Most importantly, kindness wins.
~ Kathleen Cassen Mickelson, cofounder of Gyroscope Review
and blogger at One Minnesota Writer
In Nothing More to Lose, Carolyn Martin has read and written my soul. No one has been able to feel what I felt before this poet shared her inspired words with me and now with the world. I spent more than 70 years trying to forget the events that shaped my life and gave me nightmares. Now, through working with Carolyn on both my autobiography and this chapbook, I feel healed. The nightmares are gone.
I hope these poems will help readers find courage in the realization we are not here on our own. We are guided by a Higher Power. This book is a good way to end my journey.
~Therese Kolbert Dieringer
Nothing More to Lose is also available to purchase:
Sister Katie Mindling, RSM –
Oh my gosh, Carolyn! The book came yesterday. I started reading and then I could hardly put it down. The story itself is so gripping; but, your way of recounting it in beautiful poetic verse drew me in so completely – I lost track of my surroundings and entered in to the events as they unfolded so graphically and incredibly.
How amazing is the human spirit that can live through so much and survive so beautifully. The horrors of war, cruelty, and utter inhumanity are so appalling to me. Without ever meeting Therese, her life inspires me and renews my commitment to defend immigrants who are “endowed with basic and inalienable rights ordered to their own development” (Laudato si #157).
Diane Leahy –
This is such a poignant recount of Theresea’s life. The resilience of her character shines throughout this book. Such a compelling read.
Kathy Richard –
If there ever was a person destined to have a poetry book written about her life, Therese Kolbert-Dieringer is that one and Carolyn Martin is the poet to bring her story to life through poetry. Not a single poem, left me emotionally untouched. All of them are gems and can stand alone but when assembled as a collection, their power to create such a vivid imagery of Therese’s journey is amazing.
Melanie Green –
What a powerful, meaningful, and vital story that Carolyn Martin has helped be “re-born” into the world.
So many intimate details of the most vivid, emotional, inspiring, difficult, and kind, and loving. Martin has told this extraordinary story through poetry, which gets to the heart of the matter so cleanly and accurately. I’ve learned much from this poetry-story. It will stay with me as an inspiring life lesson.
Jean Harkin –
Kindness amid oppression. The theme arises throughout this poetic memoir of an heroic woman, Therese Kolbert Dieringer, and her family. For this Hungarian family in Nazi-controlled countries during WWII, enemy and friend often looked alike. Seven years of suffering in Germany, they were endangered sometimes saved, by Nazis and the Allies. Chaos didn’t end with VE Day; along came the Communists. As refugees in America, Therese braved more abuse until true and lasting love arrived at last. One of my favorite poems in the book is where Therese’s mother’s satchel speaks of carrying memories and records from place to place throughout the family’s harrowing years. Once I began reading this book I had to read through to the end, including further notes.
Joan Miller –
I can’t remember a time in my life when a book has affected me the way yours did. I heard the voices, both ugly and joyful. I felt and heard the explosions, smelled the grease, held my breath. Therese needed to be quiet. I felt the love, the warmth of family. I smelled the smells– even the cow poop (which I wasn’t fond of but that’s where you took me). I was memorized through the entire book!!
You’re writing is so good, so explicit I couldn’t move for minutes after I finished the book. I sat in silence and stared marveling at how strong Therese was growing up through all this hate and still finding joy in moments. How she became a caretaker at such a young age being robbed of her childhood and not complaining. She was doing what needed to be done.
I’m going to read it again and try to take on a child’s point of view. Read it as if I was a child so I can feel more of what it felt like at such a tender age to be so scared and feel her sorrow and joy.
Rosemary Hudak –
Carolyn, I just finished your book. It was powerful! Wow, the resilience of the human spirit! In this time of covid-19 this book brings hope to the reader.