All That Feeds Us: The West Virginia Poems

by Mark Harshman

Through his big-hearted poems, Marc Harshman teaches the rest of us how to pry ourselves open a little, to love the world and everything in it just a little more. Whatever their subject the death of a grandmother, sympathy for a bear, or the way a trout fisherman can be caught every bit as much as a trout these poems are deeply felt, deeply affecting and absolutely essential. n Doug Van Gundy, author of A Life Above Water n All That Feeds The West Virginia Poems by Marc Harshman is a wonderful collection that ranges from the story of the ancient Hebrews to the very concrete lives of contemporary rural West Virginians. He writes of milk and honey/loaves and fishes/tomatoes and sweet corn as well as of fly-fishing, whinnying screech owls, mountaintop removal, apples in the basement, and gum trees with red leaves smoldering. All of this takes us deep into the meaning of human experience. Every word rings true, and truth rings out of the poems. n Meredith Sue Willis, author of Stories from Stories and Higher Ground n The first thing you may notice about Marc Harshman's beautifully made poems are their convincing, low-key spoken voice. Then you discover the sweetness of his images of "ordinary" people and West Virginia landscapes; as he says in "Setting the Hook": "there's no getting free/of what it is here I love." I don't know another living poet who does these things so well and so truly. Ed Ochester, author of Poems Selected and New and Editor, Pitt Poetry Series

25 pages, Pamphlet

Published June 1, 2013