Reviewed by Lisa Rhodes Ryabchich
Tensions of War and Innocence
Golden Armor
by Armenida Qyqja
Transcendent Zero Press
May 2025, Paperback, 111 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1946460622
Golden Armor by Armenia Qyqja, a full-length poetry collection of a 111 pages, is an empathetic, ingenious, heartfelt, and passionate manuscript full of feministic candor, by an Albanian poet, showing readers how and what it means to stay alive mentally, physically, and emotionally during and after war. And how to survive the loneliness from longing and yearning for romantic love, from ones lover, vanquished by war, either real, or even possibly imagined, in a world full of continual catastrophic events, which Qyqja uses as a clever catalyst, to express her moral outrage regarding wars, human rights abuses, and most predominantly her country’s genocidal war, between the controlling Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Albania separatist militia in Kosovo in 1999.
Qyqja, a romanticist, threads her pain and passionate desires throughout her poems, as a vehicle in which to survive. She mentions ironically, how fortunate she was to not have been born in any other war-torn country besides Albania, and takes us to the past and current tragic global war grounds in her poem “Bitter thoughts,” always reiterating how important love is, especially when it is subjugated and or prohibited by dictators and or bombs as written in the line, “Syria they burned it to the ground…and not in Iran either, love is forbidden in that country, how would I meet you there? And not in Moscow or Ukraine, bombed are the mornings there, the best time to make love,” said Qyqja.
In another strong, critical poem entitled “Undated Battles,” readers can dignantly mourn the devastation and loss of human life and suffering, in the Middle East with Qyqja’s metaphorical use of language, as she condemns the horrors of the genocidal War in Palestine, where the suffering of women and children are heard, which news reports have shown were intentionally implemented by the IDF, to try to destroy the Palestinian people’s culture, in her unforgettable words, “syllables that fight and cry among themselves, over infant’s bodies, mothers, wails,” said Qyqja.
And Qyqja’s recurrent theme of yearning for love and healing is expressed in another of her poems, “Suppressed Childhoods,” where Qyqja discusses the tragedy of premature manhood, caused by the devastating effects of media brainwashing, expressed in the metaphorical line “the bodies returned by the sea’s full belly.” And Qyqja instills hope and joy in revisiting events from childhood, like the sharing of personal secrets, after a childhood is pushed into the subconscious, in order to preserve the mind of a normal order during wartime and is reawakened again, by her looking into her lover’s eyes, and remembering his innocent non-war-torn eyes, after his return from war. Qyqja embellishes this thought by the line, “your eyes the same as now,” and in this case one can romanticize with the poet, seeing into the eyes of her lover, and re-experiencing the joy and innocence of their childhoods.
In Qyqja’s poem “Mercenaries of Chaos,” Qyqja reminds us about the most devastating effects of war, in terms of its potential for annihilating the entire human race with her words, “what will you say one day to the empty skulls of your children, that won’t know anything else other than shaking involuntarily uncontrollably, Tequila, tequila va, va.” And the meaning of Tequila, tequila va, va, is originated “from a hit song in Albania of no meaning other than tequila, of uneducated “artist” generation,” said Qyqja.
Once again, in Qyqja’s poem “In Love,” the poet rejoices in her dream of her lover returning from war, in the line, “releasing my torn dreams from the hidden trenches of the night…” and her passion is felt throughout the entire manuscript and is unrelenting. Love heals is her ultimate message inscribed in a majority of Qyqja’s poems.
There are a few places in Qyqja’s poems where the poet expresses a need for renewal and eradication of her broken parts, and self-hate, but Qyqja’s message is clear, love will save you in the end, if you continue in believing in yourself and instill the powers of love and all its glory and joy into everything you do.
Golden Armor is an excellent well-crafted ambitious book that is unrelenting with a clear message on how to survive as a refuge and maintain mental, physical, and emotional sobriety, and by doing so you can save oneself and others from the fires of depression and loneliness.
About the reviewer: Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich teaches poetry at Westchester Community College. She has also taught a memoir, fiction, poetry writing class at Piermont Library and elsewhere. She has a MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, a B.A. in Communications from St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, N.Y., a Computer Science Certificate in Business Applications from SUNY Purchase in Purchase, N.Y., a B.S. in Journalism from Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., a Television News Production Certificate from New York University in Manhattan, N.Y., and a B.A. in Speech Pathology and Audiology from Lehman College in the Bronx, N.Y. She was a recipient of a 2016 writing Fellowship with Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Furthermore, Lisa was a mentor for Pen America’s Prison Writing Program, which helped prisoners reach their potential, promoted healing and rehabilitation.