Böcker av Marc Harshman

Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of West Virginia, offers up his newest full-length collection of poems and demonstrates his dependably keen observational skills that elevate landscapes and people into an almost mythic realm. In many of the poems there is, as well, a threatening presence from whose grim circumstances he wrestles, if not hope, glimmers of its possibilities. And always there are signature poems like "Poet in the Schools" that simply lift off the page with a storyteller's finesse "for every single one of us / who's ever not been called on / who's felt hung out to dry, been picked last, / been poked, tripped, and toppled, / lost, strung out, yearning, abused, dying / somewhere out of sight / in our private universes, and he, he has opened the rooms / of paradise / for us to see / how simply easy it is / to smile. . ."

This collection of poetry by West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman explores the difficulty of living with an awareness of the eventual death of all living things. Each of its four sections suggests a coping mechanism for this inevitable predicament, from storytelling, to accepting darkness and death as a creative force, to enjoying disruption and chaos, and finally to embracing the mystery of life as the most triumphant story of all. These difficulties come "not quite haphazardly" and not without a "last light"--something "beyond" and as "sweet as apples." With these moments of grace, Harshman taps into the satisfying richness that comes from unexpected revelations, helping us rise above the fragile recesses of life and death, all while portraying the lost rural worlds of the Midwest and Appalachia in ways untouched by sentiment or nostalgia.