Waking: Poems by Ron Rash
(Hub City Press, 2011)
April is the national poetry month, and since Lemuria does not have a seasoned poetry reader/bookseller, I decided to write about two of Ron’s four poetry books.
Waking is Ron’s first book poetry in nearly a decade. I read Waking soon after it appeared this fall. It was the first of Ron’s poetry books that I had read and I enjoyed it. Ron’s rural details capture southern man’s enchantment with nature, lightening, weather, and so on. These elements are easy to relate to and they speak to the southern myth.
On water from “Watauga County: 1959”
as I hear silence widen
like fish swirls on a calm pond
On reflection from “Mirror”
come clear in first light and find
only herself, which is all
she wishes for this moment
On love from “Rebecca Boone”
the bed
where need and memory merged
On the known and unknown from “Rebecca Boone”
then lifted the newborn, smiled
at a face more his own than
even he could understand.
On contemplation from “Waterdogs”
passing clouds
read like pages turned in a book
After Waking I immediately picked up Eureka Mill (Hub City, 1998), a book of poems which captures life in the mill town of Eureka. With emphatic vision, Rash captures the trials of Appalachia. Though I appreciate the Eureka Mill concept through poetry, for me personally I did not find as many signals of the truth in this collection.
Please join us for one of Lemuria’s favorite writers. Ron takes the banner of southern literature forward with his new novel The Cove. But I sure hope Ron will enchant us with some of his poems, maybe some new ones. Unfortunately, Ron’s first two book of poems Among the Believers and Raising the Dead are long out of print. I wish Hub City would reprint them in a single volume.
Join us this evening, April 18th, for a signing and reading with Ron Rash at 5:00 and 5:30.
Comments are closed.