In a Belgian Garden and Other Poems

Frank Oliver Call's collection opens in a Belgian garden, but this is no ordinary pastoral scene. The garden exists in a landscape scarred by war, where shell craters have replaced flower beds and the poet walks among ruins searching for beauty that persists despite destruction. Call, a Canadian educator and poet, wrote these verses with the dual vision of someone who loved the natural world and witnessed its systematic devastation. The poems move between lush depictions of untouched landscapes and the hollowed-out terrain of the Western Front, finding in nature both resilience and fragility. Some verses celebrate the simple miracle of a flower pushing through rubble; others confront the moral and physical wreckage of modern warfare with unflinching honesty. Throughout, Call wrestles with questions that have no answers: why beauty exists alongside such destruction, and what purpose can be found in a world that permits such needless ruin. This is poetry for readers who turn to nature writing not to escape reality but to process grief, and for those interested in the Great War's literary aftermath from voices beyond the major combatant nations.