Summary

Dispatch from the Mountain State encompasses the trademark themes of a mature poet—death, despair, dread, and the seeming randomness with which all of these come into life. The dispatches provide, if sometimes obliquely, a keen awareness of the troubled times within which we live, whether the flashpoint be race, the recent pandemic, or the reckless onslaught of the Appalachian mining industry, which is masterfully addressed in the long poem, “The Breach.” Harshman’s distinctive vision remains both surreal and familiar, whether expressed in a sonnet or the more common free-verse characteristic of most of his work. 

This collection of over forty poems sings with a fluid voice and dazzles with imagery that surprises and rings true, often underlain by and intertwined with the darker threads of our common living and dying as contemporary Appalachians. It is rare to find a poet like Harshman, who is deeply connected to the life of rural America and yet writes poetry untouched by any sentiment for the old ways found there. 

Contents

Acknowledgments

First

Dispatch from the Mountain State

The Apple Trees Were in Blossom

River

Beech Bottom, West Virginia

Hunger

This Light

Black and White

Reading 

Storm Lyrics

Some Day

Polly

Taking It All on Faith

Dancing Below the Curious Hills

Once More Home

Second

Ancestry

I Come to the Garden Alone

Where She Lives

Well Enough

Wake

Headlines

The Door Open

Back to the Garden

Jackson Pollock and the Starlings . . . 

Insomnia

Chapel    

Tinnitus

Astonished

Flight Behavior

Haying    

Politics

Blue in Green    

Grandmother Loved to Dance    

Late October    

Skeletal

Beauty and . . . 

Third

A Breach

Fourth

Heart Work

Just Outside the Grocery a Boy with a Gun

April 17, Romney Road

Not a Boy Scout

Surrender

Nowhere Beyond

The News and the History

Reminders
 

Author

Marc Harshman is poet laureate of West Virginia. He has published eight collections of poetry, including the award-winning titles Woman in Red Anorak and Believe What You Can. He is also the author/coauthor of fourteen children’s books. Harshman was recently named the Appalachian Heritage Writer for 2024 by Shepherd University’s Appalachian Studies program. He holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. He lives in Wheeling. 

Reviews

Praise for Believe What You Can (2018, WVU Press):  “Believe What You Can overflows with rich lines and vivid images as the poet laureate of West Virginia speaks to classic concerns of loving the land, struggling to thrive, and holding on to what can be believed.”
—Ron Houchin, author of The Man Who Saws Us In Half: Poems