To be found in Dispatch from the Mountain State are the trademark themes of a mature poet—death, despair, dread and the seeming randomness with which all these come into a life. The dispatches provide, if sometimes obliquely, a keen awareness of the troubled times within which we live, whether the flashpoint be race, the pandemic, or the hell-bent-for-leather onslaught upon the environment being witnessed throughout Appalachia and which is masterfully addressed in Harshman’s long poem, “The Breach.” Always, Harshman’s vision remains inexplicably surreal and familiar, whether expressed in a sonnet or the more common free verse characteristic of most of his work. There is, however, despite the dark times and experiences, the poet’s trust that even if against the odds there will be “some kind of grace to deliver me / to something somehow more.”
Marc Harshman’s Woman in Red Anorak (Lynx House Press) won the Blue Lynx Prize. His fourteenth children’s book, Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece, (co-author, Anna Smucker) was published by Roaring Brook. His most recent poetry collection is Following the Silence, Press 53. He has been the poet laureate of West Virginia since 2012.
