Poems

New and Selected

Ron Rash

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780062435521
• eBook ISBN: 9780062435538
• Subtopic: Literature General

A collection of haunting lyricism that evokes the beauty and hardship of the rural South, by a revered American master of letters—the award-winning, bestselling author of the novels Serena, Something Rich and Strange, and Above the Waterfall.

In this incandescent, profound, and accessible collection, beloved and award-winning poet, novelist, and short-story writer Ron Rash vividly channels the rhythms of life in Appalachia, deftly capturing the panoply of individuals who are its heart and soul—men and women inured to misfortune and hard times yet defined by tremendous fortitude, resilience, and a fierce sense of community.

In precise, supple language that swerves from the stark to the luminous, Rash richly describes the splendor of the natural landscape and poignantly renders the lives of those dependent on its bounty—in cotton mills and tobacco fields, farmlands and forests. The haunting memories and shared histories of these people—their rituals and traditions—animate this land, and are celebrated in Rash’s crystalline, intensely imagined verse.

With an eye for the surprising and vivid detail, Ron Rash powerfully captures the sorrows and exaltations of this wondrous world he knows intimately. Illuminating and indelible, Poems demonstrates his rich talents and confirms his legacy as a standard-bearer for the literature of the American South.

RAISING THE DEAD

LAST SERVICE

Though cranes and bulldozers came,

yanked free marble and creek stones

like loose teeth, and then shovels

unearthed coffins and Christ’s

stained glass face no longer paned

windows but like the steeple,

piano, bell, and hymnals

followed that rolling graveyard

over the quick-dying streams,

the soon obsolete bridges—

they still congregated there,

wading then crossing in boats

those last Sunday nights, their farms

already lost in the lake,

nothing but that brief island

left of their world as they lit

the church with candles and sang

from memory deep as water

old hymns of resurrection

before leaving that high ground

where the dead had once risen.

UNDER JOCASSEE

One summer morning when

the sky is blue and deep

as the middle of the lake,

rent a boat and shadow

Jocassee’s western shoreline

until you reach the cove that

once was the Horsepasture River.

Now bow your head and soon

you’ll see as through a mirror

not a river but a road

flowing underneath you.

Follow that road into

the deeper water where

you’ll pass a family graveyard,

then a house and barn.

All that’s changed is time,

so cut the motor and drift

back sixty years and remember

a woman who lived in that house,

remember an August morning

as she walks from the barn,

the milking done, a woman

singing only to herself,

no children yet, her husband

distant in the field.

Suddenly she shivers,

something dark has come

over her although

no cloud shades the sun.

She’s no longer singing.

She believes someone

has crossed her grave, although

she will go to her grave,

a grave you’ve just passed over,

wondering why she looked up.

TAKING DOWN THE LINES

They tore the telephone lines

from the valley like unhealed

stitches, poles and wires hauled off

through which voices had once flowed

across Jocassee like freshets

crisscrossing, running backward

into far coves where one phone

might be shared by five families.

In those lines was sediment

of births and sickness, deaths,

love vows and threats, all passed on

mouth to mouth, vital as breath

before silenced in the lake’s

currents of lost connections.

FALL CREEK

As though shedding an old skin,

Fall Creek slips free from fall’s weight,

clots of leaves blackening snags,

back of pool where years ago

local lore claims clothes were shed

by a man and woman wed

less than a month, who let hoe

and plow handle slip from hands,

left rows half done, crossed dark waves

of bottomland to lie on

a bed of ferns, make a child,

and all the while the woman

stretching both arms behind her

over the bank, hands swaying

wrist-deep in current—perhaps

some old wives’ tale, water’s pulse

pulsing what seed might be sown,

or just her need to let go

the world awhile, let the creek

wash away every burden

her life had carried so far,

open a room for th...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Resolution
• Raising the Dead
• Among the Believers
• Eureka Mill
• Waking
• New Poems
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Also by Ron Rash
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher