In the case of El Salvador, an estimated 75,000 people were killed in a twelve-year period, so there was no way of getting away from that violence.  Such experiences colored survivors’ worlds by making them somewhat numb to the brutality—poetry helps me capture that dichotomy.  After all, how can we use rational terms to explain the brutality of war?  How do we explain that life goes on other than by providing images of children playing in the backdrop of cadavers?  The answer for me is in poetry.