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Believe What You Can: Poems
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.
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.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2016
3 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Marc Harshman
35 books12 followersMarc Harshman is the poet laureate of West Virginia, appointed by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin in May 2012. His poems have appeared in such publications as Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, The Progressive, Appalachian Heritage, Bateau, and Fourteen Hills. Other poems have been anthologized by Kent State University, the University of Iowa, University of Georgia, and the University of Arizona.
His eleven children's books include ONLY ONE, a Reading Rainbow review title on PBS TV and THE STORM, a Junior Library Guild selection and Smithsonian Notable Book Parent's Choice Award recipient. Booklist has called this same title "a knowing book that will speak to all children about self-image and hard-won success."
Mr. Harshman was honored in 1994 by receiving the Ezra Jack Keats/ Kerlan Collection Fellowship from the University of Minnesota for research of Scandinavian myth and folklore. He was also named the West Virginia State English Teacher of the Year by the West Virginia English Language Arts Council in 1995. More recently, he was named the recipient of the WV Arts Commission Fellowship in Poetry for the year 2000 and the Fellowship in Children's Literature for 2008. His children's titles have been published in Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Danish, and Swedish.
Marc is fondly known by many as a storyteller who served for over twenty years as a judge for the WV Liar's Contest held at the Vandalia Gathering in Charleston, WV. He has also served as an instructor for the historic Appalachian Writer's Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School in Hindman, KY.
Marc holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. He recently received an honorary doctorate from Bethany College in recognition of his life's work.
In honor of West Virginia's Sesquicentennial, Marc was commissioned by the Wheeling National Heritage Area to write a poem celebrating this event. This poem, "A Song for West Virginia," was presented in both Charleston and Wheeling as part of the day-long festivities held that day.
His eleven children's books include ONLY ONE, a Reading Rainbow review title on PBS TV and THE STORM, a Junior Library Guild selection and Smithsonian Notable Book Parent's Choice Award recipient. Booklist has called this same title "a knowing book that will speak to all children about self-image and hard-won success."
Mr. Harshman was honored in 1994 by receiving the Ezra Jack Keats/ Kerlan Collection Fellowship from the University of Minnesota for research of Scandinavian myth and folklore. He was also named the West Virginia State English Teacher of the Year by the West Virginia English Language Arts Council in 1995. More recently, he was named the recipient of the WV Arts Commission Fellowship in Poetry for the year 2000 and the Fellowship in Children's Literature for 2008. His children's titles have been published in Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Danish, and Swedish.
Marc is fondly known by many as a storyteller who served for over twenty years as a judge for the WV Liar's Contest held at the Vandalia Gathering in Charleston, WV. He has also served as an instructor for the historic Appalachian Writer's Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School in Hindman, KY.
Marc holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. He recently received an honorary doctorate from Bethany College in recognition of his life's work.
In honor of West Virginia's Sesquicentennial, Marc was commissioned by the Wheeling National Heritage Area to write a poem celebrating this event. This poem, "A Song for West Virginia," was presented in both Charleston and Wheeling as part of the day-long festivities held that day.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 13, 2018
Marc Harshman is a poet who strikes a deep and resonant chord. His world is one that is familiar and strange to us. A world of myth and music built from the ground up out of lives we recognize from the hollers and gardens, creeks, and craggy promontories of this state. Paths through woods and up mountain trails. Where every word is the beginning of a journey and the call to adventure is just this day this place we already live in but maybe don’t always value as we should or could. It moves us outward and forward while drawing us in. Calling us to a deep kinship with a people who in too many ways and in too many hands have been made to disappear. When writing this introduction I was reminded of the time Robert Frost was asked to explain what one of his poems meant and his response was, “you mean you want to say the poem in worse words.” And what I have written so far is really less an introduction than exercise in subtle plagiarism where I find myself taking apart Marc’s phrases and rearranging them to the purpose. This is not work too clever to aim for or hit the heart. It draws us in. So I don’t need to explain it to you. It is right there in front of you, an earthy resonant intense and dark beauty and you will know it if you are willing to look and to listen. So listen. As Marc says, “he promises to make up nothing but the truth.”
September 9, 2016
Marc Harshman's newest collection, Believe What You Can, is a powerful and compelling take on Appalachian life and culture, showing through memory and observation not only how people from the region are different from others, but also how they are the same. He beautifully captures details in language fitting of the poet laureate of West Virginia, as in these lines from "Late September":
"Night begins her slow walk over the next hill
carrying under her purple skirts
the book of chances
whose purpose is to pull everything together"
However, these are not all image poems. They include poems of idea and also poems of protest, touching on war and the pain of loss. Many are bold. A few are blunt, perhaps more so than readers of Harshman's previous books might expect.
All in all, there's enough magic in this volume to keep a reader mesmerized long after the book has moved to its new home on a shelf.
"Night begins her slow walk over the next hill
carrying under her purple skirts
the book of chances
whose purpose is to pull everything together"
However, these are not all image poems. They include poems of idea and also poems of protest, touching on war and the pain of loss. Many are bold. A few are blunt, perhaps more so than readers of Harshman's previous books might expect.
All in all, there's enough magic in this volume to keep a reader mesmerized long after the book has moved to its new home on a shelf.
October 13, 2021
This collection of poems by West Virginia's poet laureate not only invites the reader to "believe what you can" but also challenges us to see the beauty, wonder and tragedy in even the most ordinary of lives, including, of course, the one the reader is living. Every page will opebn your eyes to the realities around and within you.
March 6, 2018
This is a beautiful collection, surprising in many wonderful ways.
February 8, 2017
Believe What You Can by Marc Harshman is a wide ranging, rich collection of his poetry, organized around several threads: first is nature (he grew up on a farm and lives in northern West Virginia): there are deer and doves like the ones who "with a thudding whinny, they spring, and lift, and fly." (p. 85), as well as a plethora of precise observations that he tosses off in quantity, with ease, and always hitting his target.
Nature poems blend seamlessly into farm life, including a powerful prose poem in which Uncle Elmer tenderly encounters his wife's corpse and then calls on the young narrator to sit with the body until the undertaker comes, while he, Elmer, goes back to making hay. This piece, "Aunt Helen" (p.75), is a story on the surface, but ends with one of Harshman's many interrogations of God.
The answers Harshman derives tend toward a Buddhist emphasis on this present moment, these things around us. One lovely poem called "Monastery" tells how the brothers dug vegetables and listened for God and without any effort God came and sang for them in a wren suit (80). That's a Christianity this world could really use.
But I think the series of poems that surprised me most were the war poems. There are a number of damaged returned soldiers, including one who may be Harshman's father or some other veteran of the allegedly good war-- a veteran whose son is a poet who uses the word "Fuck" in a poem (p. 50). This poem, like several others, creates a character and tells a story, and Harshman's ability to do this without weakening the rigor of the language is a wonder.
Finally, there are a number of poems of nightmare or perhaps horror like "Where No One Else Can Go," in which a little girl with "a fistful of white violets" is left inside "the screaming house." It's pretty searing, and somehow adds to the sense that not only are American veterans traumatized, but so are ordinary middle-Americans. (p. 35)
This collection shows Harshman, the poet laureate of West Virginia, at the height of his powers, reaching out, reaching in, without melodrama, without posing, but with passion and apprehension of the mysteries.
Nature poems blend seamlessly into farm life, including a powerful prose poem in which Uncle Elmer tenderly encounters his wife's corpse and then calls on the young narrator to sit with the body until the undertaker comes, while he, Elmer, goes back to making hay. This piece, "Aunt Helen" (p.75), is a story on the surface, but ends with one of Harshman's many interrogations of God.
The answers Harshman derives tend toward a Buddhist emphasis on this present moment, these things around us. One lovely poem called "Monastery" tells how the brothers dug vegetables and listened for God and without any effort God came and sang for them in a wren suit (80). That's a Christianity this world could really use.
But I think the series of poems that surprised me most were the war poems. There are a number of damaged returned soldiers, including one who may be Harshman's father or some other veteran of the allegedly good war-- a veteran whose son is a poet who uses the word "Fuck" in a poem (p. 50). This poem, like several others, creates a character and tells a story, and Harshman's ability to do this without weakening the rigor of the language is a wonder.
Finally, there are a number of poems of nightmare or perhaps horror like "Where No One Else Can Go," in which a little girl with "a fistful of white violets" is left inside "the screaming house." It's pretty searing, and somehow adds to the sense that not only are American veterans traumatized, but so are ordinary middle-Americans. (p. 35)
This collection shows Harshman, the poet laureate of West Virginia, at the height of his powers, reaching out, reaching in, without melodrama, without posing, but with passion and apprehension of the mysteries.
April 11, 2017
"God in a wren suit"--and many other fine lines.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews