Basin Ghosts: Poems (Volume 14)

by Jesse Graves

Basin Ghosts is a collection of original poems by Jesse Graves, author of Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine . Many poems in Basin Ghosts address places and themes that resonated in Graves's first collection, which won the Weatherford Award, the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, and the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award in Poetry. The poems in Basin Ghosts examine life in the rural South, changes that have occurred over generations in communities there, and the ways in which the past lives on through memory and attachment to the land.

Grace Notes

Leora never walked the quarter-mile of red dust
to her bench at Big Sinks schoolhouse
without carrying the hand-sewn satchel
she used for an accordion case.
The notes came to her out of some darkness,
a cavity just inside her ear
where the curve of a sound pushed through
her fingers and into the buttons of that strange machine.

Where did the accordion come from?
The imprint read Vienna Austria 1904
and how it arrived to her in Capps Creek,
Tennessee, the middle of the middle of nowhere
will pass like the mystery of cloudburst,
some graceful symmetry beyond this world
and beyond the next.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2014

Reviews

[Rita Quillen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book even better than his first, though the quality was certainly there in the first one, too. I love the language and all, but I love the voice of these poems, most of all. There's such a gentle, wise, sweet spirit at work here, and an openness and vulnerability that I so love. There's absolutely no showing off in these poems, no pandering, no manipulation- Graves is no 'writer of the arabesque" to use Fred Chappell's phrase. He's no performer. A poet cannot hide who he is--really is--and his art will either be enhanced or diminished by his true self. We have many wonderful talented male poets writing today but I find their work missing something--heart, rawness, unself-consciousness, vulnerability (there's that word again-which is a synonym for courage in the RQ dictionary)...I don't know how to explain it. But whatever "IT" is.... Jesse Graves has it.

[Charles White · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this volume explores many similar themes to Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine, the poems here are more assured and personal, expressing more comprehensively his anxiety about the failures of memory.

[Melissa Helton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poetry collection that focuses on lost family, childhood memories, and times long gone. The language and forms are simple and accessible, and the universal themes of the poems make it easy for the readers to connect themselves to it. The poet manages to approach memory and loss without being sentimental or nostalgic. It's a beautiful collection with enough regional flavor that it pings recognition in people of the area, and introduces outsiders a bit to life here.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful follow up to his first collection, Graves' Basin Ghost has a perfect title as a prelude to the book's poems. In this work, Graves' captures the spirits of the past, including landscapes that no longer exist, histories that are almost forgotten, and people who are no longer with us, at least in the physical sense. A beautiful read!