"From the Kentucky Hills in a Time of War" ~~ a cycle of unrhymed sonnets

 

From the Kentucky Hills in a Time of War

A book of unrhymed sonnets based closely on the letters of a young, newly-married woman to her husband in the training camp at Quantico, Virginia in 1917, shortly before he was shipped overseas.  Written mostly among the isolated hills of her childhood home in Wolfe County, Kentucky, the letters are tender and touching with some lyrical passages, but also unsparing in their naturalistic descriptions of hardship and dysfunction.

~ ~ ~

America to Al / Jeffersonville, Kentucky / October 8, 1917

Apart from Aunt Nora who's just as kind

as she can be, all the old women here

are spiteful and mean and even make fun

of the way I talk, but I don’t much care.

They say I am foolish to promise myself

to a soldier who’s going straight to war,

but I said I would marry no one else

for if a man doesn’t have life enough

to fight for his country he isn’t likely

to fight for me. — Another old lady

said what a disgrace it was that I

should get myself into trouble like that.

What trouble? I asked, but she wouldn’t say.

I no longer listen to them at all.

But my little cousins all like me fine.

They snuggle up close and sleep with me too

and follow me everywhere that I go,

but the older women just criticize.

They say my dresses are much too short

and more becoming to a girl of twelve

than a woman of twenty.  The young girls here

go around all day on Sunday with

their sun-bonnets on, but I refuse

to wear them at all.  And in one house

where I visited there was one little girl

so drunk she could hardly stand up straight.

She was only three years old.  That hurt me

worse than anything I have seen.

 

And Al, the chickens just strutted around

on the table, scratching and pecking for crumbs

like they owned the place— and then I met

a young husband and pretty wife so poor

they had to make do in a chicken coop.  

— I would have given most anything

if you could have been with me yesterday

and seen the old cabin where I was born.

I couldn’t find it at first, so hidden

in nettles and horseweeds as it was. 

I thought I would step inside for a bit

and say hello to an old ghost or two,

but it was so dark and smelled of old dirt 

and the sadness was more than I could bear.

 

~ ~ ~

America to Al / Jeffersonville, Kentucky / October 11, 1917

 

How I wish you’d been with me yesterday

when we went for apples and had to climb

a hill so steep that our wagon and mules

nearly spilled over backwards.  The little road

was so narrow there wasn't any room

to walk alongside to drive and the banks

so high the mules couldn’t possibly

turn out on either side — so we simply

let go of the reins and followed behind.

Never seen such a road in all my life

but, Al, the apples were just wonderful

and I’m going to send you some.  I got

a bushel for 50 cents and fourteen

more for a dime, so I did pretty well.

~ ~ ~

America to Al / Jeffersonville, Kentucky / October 12, 1917

 

I got a letter from you today which 

was written on Tuesday in which you said

you would ship out soon.  I'm going to send

a box anyway and I still don't know

if even one of my letters has reached you.

You said you were only about as well

as could be expected and just holding on.

--Oh, Al, I also hated to leave you

beside the train in the dark that night.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done,

but no more than thousands of other girls

are asked to do, and I am no better

than any of them, but still . . . it is more

on certain nights than I think I can stand.

 ~ ~ ~

America to Al / Jeffersonville, Kentucky / October 18, 1917

I am glad you liked all the things I sent.

One of papa's brothers sent the yellow

apple and one of his sisters the jell.

I sent all the rest myself.  I'm sorry

the cake didn't look so good, being burned.

I climbed the tree, picked the apples and payed

a dime for them.  And I made the candy.

I am glad you got them before you left.

I sure had some time getting everything

collected all in one place together

and I had to carry that box a mile.

I'm afraid for you sailing so far away.

Even if my heart could speak I wouldn't

know how to write it, so good-bye for now.

"Closing Inventory" from Stark County Poems appears in Small Farmer's Journal

The poem "Closing Inventory," about the death of an aging farmer living alone along the Spoon River in the mid-1930s, and which first appeared in the online journal The Milk House, has been reprinted in Small Farmer's Journal.  The poem is from the collection Stark County Poems (Monongahela Books, 2019), by BJ Omanson. 

Mr. Omanson informs us that he is always pleased when his work appears in a traditional agrarian magazine as it means he is reaching a wider general audience beyond the small specialized audience of academic literary journals.

He also appreciates the unapologetically old-school  layout of farming magazines with their generous use of space and illustrations and mingling of literary pieces with practical articles on agricultural subjects.

Omanson's work has appeared several times in Small Farmer's Journal and has also appeared in Farming Magazine, an Amish publication, which has published such poets as Wendell Berry and Ted Kooser. 

"He made himself the first authentic voice of America..."

 Walt Whitman: Poet of Democracy by Cleveland Rodgers.  Illustrated. (Monongahela Books, 2025).  $8.50. 

The latest 'small booklet' from Monongahela Books is an obscure, little-known essay-- originally published in 1920-- on Whitman as a poet of democracy by one of his earlier biographers, Cleveland Rodgers, who also served as editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn Eagle, a post held for a time by Whitman himself.

        "Whitman was a great pivot and force in our national evolution. He came upon the scene in time to gather up the torch that had been kindled in Revolutionary days, and he made a heroic effort to pass it on to the new generations of Americans.  He stands with Lincoln as the exponent and prophet of the greater democracy. 

       Whitman, looking back, saw how far the Republic had come.  He looked around and ahead and saw where the nation could go if it went along.  He wove his dreams into a moving and magnificent pageant of words.  He made himself the first authentic voice of America and democracy's great prophet. "

Carter's "The Land Itself" reviewed in New Verse Review

The Land Itself, by Jared Carter.  Introductory essay by BJ Omanson.  Photographs by the author.  72 pp.  (Monongahela Books, 2019). 

Jared Carter's The Land Itself was recently reviewed by David Lee Garrison in New Verse Review. 

Here is an excerpt:

"The black and white photographs within the book and on its cover, taken by the poet himself, have no human figures in them. They have the lonely look of Andrew Wyeth paintings—abandoned houses, a closed-up church, cemetery figurines, an old mill, spirea flowing over a wall and casting shadows. And yet, the poems are about people and their struggles, people and their wanderings across Midwestern landscapes. Jared Carter tells us their stories.

       The poems are as stark, uncluttered, and unassuming as the photographs. The poet does not moralize or generalize or draw abstract conclusions. He lets the people and the land and the structures that remain on it speak for themselves. He draws back a curtain on the past and shows us birds in the rafters of a covered bridge, gas streetlamps it was thought would never go out, and a coffin filled with rock salt. Then he offers us a glimpse of the human context of such things.

       What we hear in these poems are primordial echoes of the land and reverberations from little Midwestern towns. What we see and experience are defining moments in lives now mostly forgotten. In the words of essayist R. P. Burnham, Carter 'knows that a lived human life is made up of moments, that in the lives of even the most commonplace farmer or druggist or carpenter some of those moments are magical and the very stuff the human spirit is made of.' "

The entire review can read in New Verse Review here.

"Muleskinner with the Marine Brigade" now available

 Muleskinner with the Marine Brigade

Volume 1: 

From Before the War to the Eve of Belleau Wood.

 264 photographs, 26 maps, 15 drawings, 379 pages.  8.5 x 11. 

$40.

 

From the Introduction:

       ". . . This book is as much a social and cultural, as a military history.  There is, for instance, far more about the French villagers among whom the Marines were billeted than you will find in other books about the Marine Brigade.  There is more about the rear areas, and movements from one area to the next, with all the complex preparations such movements entailed, than can easily be found elsewhere.  And there is of course a good deal of information on the care of mules and wagons, and the duties of teamsters, as well as anecdotes about teamsters and mules. 

       This book, in other words, is about those aspects of the Marine Brigade’s history which—because they do not bear directly on the fighting—have been largely passed over. But a soldier’s experience of war involves a great deal besides combat, and such “peripheral” experiences are consequential in their own right. They matter.  They are an integral part of the full story.

       It will never be possible to recover the greater part of my grandfather’s experience of the war—for the most part that experience went with him to the grave.  But there are, nevertheless, many aspects of his experience—and of the wider context of that experience—which can be recovered, and this book is the result of a fifty-year quest to seek them out and organize them into an open-ended but still coherent narrative. "

  

 

" . . . the melancholy decline of the year, "

In the Hour before Dusk, by BJ Omanson.  (Monongahela Books, 2024).  Illustrated.  75 pp.  

After half a century of work in the naturalistic narrative mode of Hardy, Robinson and Frost, Omanson returns to his aesthetic origins-- to that long period in English poetry from late-18th century Gothic to the late Victorians-- to contemplate once more the mesmerizing vistas of his youth from the more philosophical vantage of old age.

from "Old Locksley among the Ruins":

.                             It was later that year,
after weeks when the heat of midsummer
had driven Old Locksley to seek the shade,
had driven him, like a disgruntled bear,
to take sanctuary deep in his house,
deep in the cavernous gloom of his house,
with bats in the attic and dripping eaves
and high steepled windows where mystics, monks
and martyrs shone softly in sunlit glass—
it was later that year, after summer’s heat
had driven Old Locksley into the hushed
recesses and curtained-off rooms of his house—
a house that was more a cavern than house,
with ivy-encumbered and blackened stone
and deeply-set doorways encased in vine—
or more like a mausoleum, perhaps,
with its bordering arbor vitae and yew—
with crumbling foundation and groaning pipes
and crickets in corners, its redolent rooms
provisioned with humidors of tobacco
and crystal decanters of peaty scotch,
its snug little hideaways fitted out
with old leather sofas and mica lamps
enveloped in amber light—  it was later,
much later that year that Locksley, at last,
emerged amid whirlings of leaves released
from willow and maple to clutter the air
all about his head and skitter across
the garden to lodge in the lower boughs
of the conifers—  it was later that year
that Locksley returned to his garden seat,
returned to consider and contemplate
the melancholy decline of the year,
the shedding of gold and of crimson leaves,
the dropping of berries and migrating flocks
of sparrows in spruces, and all the subtle
foreshadowings of the coming cold . . .

. . . . . . 

For Autumn to Locksley was no mere bridge
of transient days linking summer's close
to the snows of winter— in Locksley's mind,
Old Autumn was less a condition of time
than of place—  it was less a recurrent phase
embracing the earth for a day, than a place
of endless ending through which the Earth moved
as a ship through a shifting sea, a region
unalterable in its alteration,
immutable as the mutable moon.

~~~~~

Note: the poem "Old Locksley among the Ruins" was originally issued as a separate book (Old Locksley among the Ruins, Monongahela Books, 2021), which has since gone out of print and can no longer be ordered.  However, "Old Locksley . . ." is currently the final poem in the collection In the Hour before Dusk  (Monongahela Books, 2021), pp. 59-73.

Now available as an illustrated book: Dana Gioia's "Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism"

Dana Gioia's seminal essay, "Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism" has just been published as a pocket-sized book liberally illustrated with period engravings.

Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism.  By Dana Gioia. (Monongahela Books, 2023).  Illustrated, 107 pp.  $15.

Excerpt: 

"Modern literary criticism on Longfellow hardly exists in the sense that it does for more overtly difficult poets like Dickinson, Stevens, or Pound. There is no substantial body of commentary on specific poems, no vital tradition of critical discourse that collectively sharpens our reading and challenges our preconceptions. The unspoken assumption, even among his advocates, has been that Longfellow's poetry requires no gloss. Consequently, many central aspects of his work have never been examined in any detail (the linguistic stylization and rhetoric of Hiawatha, for example) and misconceptions about his work abound. The best Longfellow scholarship often has a decidedly old-fashioned feel; it traces historical sources, clarifies textual problems, and connects biographical data to the poems. Such criticism addresses a small group of nineteenth-century specialists rather than the general readership for American poetry; it implicitly ducks the issue of Longfellow's relevance to contemporary letters. On the rare occasions Longfellow criticism has spoken eloquently to a broader audiences as in essays by Horace Gregory, Howard Nemerov, and Leslie Fiedler, his champions have usually been more concerned with the general mission of keeping him, however marginally, in the canon than with examining specific features of his work. Since Longfellow's work now largely exists in a critical vacuum, one must begin any serious examination of his work with a few basic observations about the unusual nature of his poetic development and the strange combination of circumstances that brought this multi-talented literary man into poetry."  

Harshman reads from "Dark Hills of Home" on Mountain Stage

 

(this Mountain Stage concert aired on April 4, 2023).

KATHY MATEA:  Hello again and welcome to the second hour of Mountain Stage.  I'm Kathy Mattea and I'm so glad you joined us.  We're back here in Charleston, West Virginia and we're celebrating our 39th Anniversary today. .. . . .  Still to come, a very special extended set from Bela Fleck, 'My Bluegrass Home.'    But we're going to open this second hour with a writer and poet .  In fact, he's celebrating his 10th Anniversary as West Virginia's Poet Laureate.  He's written 14 nationally acclaimed children's books and 7 books of poetry .  .  .  (long list of titles and prizes), and his newest book for this, his anniversary year, called Dark Hills of Home, published by Monongahela Books.  He says, "It's hard to explain, but I'm the kind of writer who needs to know where the woods are, and that there are good friends and neighbors nearby."  Please welcome back to the Mountain Stage, Marc Harshman.

MARC HARSHMAN:  Thank you Kathy . . .  I'm so happy to return to be part of another anniversary celebration.  This first poem is from my new book, Dark Hills of Home, and is one that plants us squarely in West Virginia, particularly the southeastern mountains, "Not All that Much."  (reads it, followed by "Cleaning the Cistern.").

Omanson's memoir of a winter alone in the wilderness serialized online at The Milk House

Selections from the first volume of BJ Omanson's memoir, Three Years on the Nowhere Road is currently being serialized online at The Milk House, a collective of rural writing based in Ireland.

Part 1 is introduced by the following paragraph: 

 

What follows is a selection from the opening chapters of BJ Omanson’s memoir Three Years on the Nowhere Road in which he recounts the strange and haphazard road that led him to a life of poetry— a life of inadequate means, manual labor, wilderness solitude and— as he was a high-school dropout— nothing whatever to do with writing programs or academia. 

 In November of 1972, married scarcely a year and having lost his job as a tree trimmer with the Rockford Park District in Illinois due to being on the losing side of a labor strike, with winter coming on and no prospect of comparable work before spring, Omanson made a drastic decision. He packed his uncle’s WWII seabag with a change of clothes, a blanket and some books, took five dollars from the household nest egg and announced his intention to hitchhike out to the coast of Washington State, where there was said to be a logging boom in progress and work to be had by anyone who could handle a chainsaw. We pick up his story several days later, on a deserted two-lane road in an Oregon forest, sometime after midnight:

 Continue reading at The Milk House:

Forthcoming ~ Relics: Philosophical and Political Writings, 1966-86, by Virginia DeCourcey.

Relics: Philosophical and Political Writings, 1966-86  by Virginia DeCourcey.

Excerpt: from her essay "Justice as a Metaethical Absolute" 

       Justice is a word, like Freedom, or the Good, that functions on so many different levels of meaning that it is difficult to know with any certainty what the term connotes. In everyday language, the “just” is apprehended on an intuitive level and usually in the context of fairness: people may say, “That was an unjust thing to do,” “War is never just,” etc.  We intuitively grasp the moral response to real life situations that these statements express.  That intuitive grasp, however, may not come from some innate faculty in man to perceive the moral.

       Perhaps we intuitively grasp the idea of Justice, without analyzing it, because we share in the same language community.  Through many associations and long use we have come to express automatically certain normative judgments that seem sound.  In this regard Justice as an abstraction is most often viewed as a collection of certain ethical statements.

       It is the purpose of this essay, however, to inquire into the function of Justice as an ethical category in language.  While such an approach does not contribute any new normative speculation concerning the ethical correctness of solutions to certain current moral problems, it is hoped that such a linguistic analysis might help to clarify the nature of Justice as an ethical concept, its role as an ideal or absolute in a system of knowledge – as well as shedding light on why we accept as a matter of course certain normative propositions that we intuitively relate to the idea of Justice.

 

Ethical Absolutes: Plato and Kant   

       In terms of language function and implication, Justice is an extremely broad concepts – and roughly belongs to a family of concepts that may include equity, rectitude, fairness.  Although Justice may be used in an overall sense as a term descriptive of a particular condition among men, the term Justice is neither descriptive nor normative in its major language function.

       Both descriptive and normative definitions of Justice, presuppose that the term in its central meaning contains a truth-claim concerning the proper condition of men in society.  Examples of such normative definitions of Justice range from Plato’s internal harmony in the mind, to Kant’s Categorical Imperative.  In The Republic Plato comes close to discovering the unique problem in the language function of Justice, when he dismisses particular empirical instances of Justice as important in the definition of the term.  Of course, Plato implies this argument in his theory of Forms: hence, it is not too meaningful to speak of empirical instances of Justice as they are but shadows of the true quality of Justice which is the eternal Form.  Further, as expressed in the Allegory of the Cave, it is only the supreme knowledge of the Good that brings enlightenment concerning the lesser Forms of Truth, Justice and Beauty.

       Although the ontological approach to the Forms may be rejected, Plato’s argument for the essential non-empirical property of Justice is sound.  The concept of Justice is demonstrably not equivalent to any empirical instances we may find.  Of course, one could take the concept of a tree and argue that as an idea it could never contain all properties of every tree in the sense of description alone.  Hence, a given definition of Justice could not possibly express all nuances of Justice in the human condition.

        However, this argument ignores the ethical language function of such a term as Justice, and reduces the word to a mere descriptive term such as “red,” or “heavy.”  But Justice in its core meaning is not adjectival nor is it concerned with the concrete properties of events or states of affairs.  Such a view is suggested by the fact that no single act can carry with it the automatic connotation of Justice without some reference to a wider context of values and interests.  Identical acts can be considered just and injust depending upon particular circumstances.  Plato’s famous question whether to give back the weapons of a friend who has become insane, is a paradigm of the extreme difficulty of describing any action or condition in itself as either just or injust, and the attribution of a normative content to the concept of Justice itself.

       Kant recognized the impossibility of a definition of Justice based upon empirical description alone, but he argued for a normative content in terms of the Categorical Imperative: To act according to a maxim that can at the same time be valid as a universal law.  Later in his discussion of Justice, Kant includes the ideas of Freedom and Will, finally concluding:

     Hence the universal law of Justice is: act externally in such a way that the free use of your will is compatible with the freedom of everyone according to a universal law. 

       However, it is difficult to define Justice in such a normative sense because the definition is too broad: persons acting compatibly in terms of will in a state of freedom, is not necessarily a condition either of justice or injustice.  All other attempts at normative definitions of Justice in a like sense prove insufficient.  Plato’s own intermediate definitions of Justice as, first, giving to each that which is fitting to him—and, later, Justice as the internal harmony within the mind—describe states of affairs that need not contain the element of Justice.  For example, we might perceive internal harmony in a man yet it is doubtful that we would automatically consider his condition just.  The first definition, giving to each that which is fitting, perhaps comes closer to our own intuitive understanding of Justice—yet it can be argued that this definition is not really sufficient either.  Giving to one man that which is fitting, might conceivably harm another: thus we would not consider such an act as itself just without reference to other considerations.

       The Platonic dialogue the Thaetetus asks the question: what quality, when added to right opinion, gives knowledge?  In like manner we may ask, in reference to the above definitions: what element when added to Plato’s internal harmony—Kant’s compatibility of wills in a condition of freedom—yields Justice?  Just as perception and right opinion may be necessary elements for knowledge, and yet not be equivalent to knowledge; so harmony and freedom may form necessary preconditions for Justice, yet not be Justice at all in terms of providing an adequate definition.

       Thus it can be argued that whatever the definition of Justice may be, as an idea it functions neither as a strict descriptive term of a particular condition among men, nor a normative rule or formula which automatically yields Justice in any given situation.  Yet in terms of language function, concepts usually work in either the first or second capacity.  Justice, as a concept, would seem to share a certain property in language function along with such a concept as knowledge.  With both concepts, the whole appears to be greater than its parts—because neither idea appears to be totally reducible to its analyzable components.

       Justice may be contained in a particular action: e.g., action in accordance with the Golden Rule. Yet the Golden Rule does not exhaust the concept of Justice, and neither does any other normative rule. Yet as the property of "justness" is expressed in particular acts and decisions, so Justice as a concept bears a relationship to any number of normative rules and values. It is this very connection between Justice and the empirical act, between Justice and the normative rule -- that contains the added element which yields justice in any given situation. What is the nature of this connection? When Plato treated Justice as one of the higher Forms, he meant to abstract it as a quality from the empirical world: but at the same time he gave Justice an existence more real and ultimate than any phenomenon in the material realm. Justice as a concept, however, may work on a language level in a way which resembles the functioning of the Forms in Platonic philosophy. The Forms are necessary for Plato foremostly in a logical sense because of his characteristic blending of ontological and epistemological categories. No empirical instances of a phenomenon, no matter how many or how varied, can create the inner logical necessity of an abstract concept. Plato intuited this problem inherent in the structure of language and empirical knowledge, but chose to attribute the necessity of a given concept to an eternal essence or substance -- the existence of which made the concept possible.  Kant seeks to validate certain concepts, such as causation, by postulating the existence of a priori categories in the mind. Thus a somewhat more subtle blending of the categories of knowing and being, permeates the Kantian argument as well. Hence for Kant and Plato, certain concepts are possible on an epistemological level because of either Forms which make up the highest reality, or certain categories which exist internally within the mind.

       When viewed from this perspective, both Plato's and Kant's arguments focus on the problem of the leap from empirical instance to abstract concept. Both of their attempts to bridge the disparity involve setting up absolutes that function both as source and Perimeter for certain concepts.

       Of course, not every concept in a system of knowledge requires an absolute. Plato argued for such absolutes in terms of the higher Ideas of Truth, Justice and Beauty -- making the highest Form that of the Good. Kant formulated absolutes both intuitively in the a priori catagories of space and time, and logically in the synthetic a priori categories. In the division of the noumenal and the phenomenal, Kant makes the further distinction between the world in itself and our description of it.  In a sense, Plato makes the eternal Forms a part of the noumenal world -- objects in themselves that govern our knowledge.

        It can be said that the question to which both Plato and Kant were addressing themselves, is the problem of truth-claims in absolutes in a system of knowledge. This difficulty concerning truth-claims is the first question that must be discussed in the search for a definition of Justice.

       In a system of knowledge, there are two kinds of propositions: the first are descriptive propositions while the second are normative or ethical propositions. The absolutes required for descriptive propositions are certain logical categories in language -- categories such as Kant presents in the Transcendental Analytic. The absolutes needed for ethical propositions are inherently different, but share a nature somewhat similar to the Platonic Forms. However, Plato argued for these absolutes in terms of ontological categories—whereas it is my contention that they are metaethical absolutes, the truth-claims of which are unique in a system of knowledge. An example of such a metaethical absolute is Justice.

       What is the function of a metaethical absolute in a system of knowledge, and how does the absolute of ethics differ from that of logic? The logical absolute is but a form defining the relationship of the subject to the predicate in a proposition: as an absolute, it also contains categories of the possible judgments that can be made about phenomena -- in the sense of Kant's view that every concept is ultimately a judgment. Although the question of material implication in logical propositions is important -- and thus the content of a proposition need not refer to real objects -- yet such propositions in a truth-order have as their major function the description of external phenomena. Metaethical absolutes, which underlie ethical and normative propositions, function differently. Primarily this difference has to do with the kind of phenomena involved: metaethics is concerned with the sphere of categories involving moral decision and action. An important epistemological problem is the determination of whether normative propositions (and thus the metaethical absolutes from which they are derived) contain any valid truth-claims. The real difficulty is that normative statements attempt knowledge, not in terms of what exists, but in terms of what ought to exist in the human condition.

Straight out of law school in the early 1970s, a young man seeks a position among the law firms of small-town western Kentucky. 

After Law School: All the Doors I Knocked On, by James R. Elkins. (Monongahela Books, March 2024). Illustrated, 24 pages. $10. 

 Excerpt:

           During my final semester at the University of Kentucky College of Law in the fall of 1971, I began sending out letters of inquiry regarding employment to various Louisville law firms, but they elicited little interest. One Louisville lawyer, in a small firm, returned my resume with a scrawled question: How much do you want? I almost answered: More than you are willing to pay!

          I have a faint recollection of visiting one Louisville firm. The walk down the hallway of their office provided a chilling glimpse of how lawyers work: each door open, every man dressed in the same dark suit, each head bowed. Not one looked up to acknowledge my presence. I now suspect I only imagined that interview; I’m no longer certain it actually happened. I never had any notion I would end up as a Louisville lawyer. I never imagined myself going off to the big city to practice law, becoming a big-city lawyer. That inconsequential visit to a Louisville law firm may be nothing more than a muddling of old memories.

          Then there was the drive to Hodgenville in central Kentucky to talk with a lawyer in a three-man firm. The size of the firm sounded better suited for what I was after, or thought I might be after. As I had grown up on a twenty-acre farm, attended a small rural high school, and elected to go on to law school in my home state, the idea of practicing law in a small firm had its appeal. I knew nothing about the work of Louisville law firms, and not much about the work of small town lawyers like the one I was visiting in Hodgenville. All I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to do title searches! I had the vague notion that I might become a criminal defense lawyer. How that might pan out, I had no idea. The lawyer, in our brief correspondence, hadn’t mentioned criminal work at all.

          As for the town of Hodgenville, I knew no more about it than I did about the law firm. All I knew was that Hodgenville was reputedly the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. The pleasurable prospect of practicing law in Lincoln’s birthplace was a welcome distraction from worrying whether or not my gray-green herringbone sports jacket and subdued tie were appropriate attire for the interview.

          Hodgenville felt familiar for a town I had never stepped a foot in. But then, this was what every small town in Kentucky looked like. The lawyer’s office was down-town, a short walk from the courthouse and was not difficult to find. The lawyer was friendly in a folksy sort of way—adept at banter and at holding in abeyance what we both knew we were there to discuss. We talked on about one thing and then another until, in a suddenly sober tone, he advised me that he was involved in local politics. There were no details provided. I knew enough about small-town lawyers of that era to appreciate that there was nothing unusual or out-of-the-way about such a lawyer involving himself in politics. I had dabbled in politics myself in high school (campaigning for Ned Breathitt, governor of Kenucky from ‘63 to ‘67), and during my first year in college. I was neither oblivious nor adverse to the law-politics connection.

          Eventually the lawyer came round to the point: Do you mind if I ask you what party you belong to? I told him I was a Democrat. His smile disappeared. Well, you can always change parties. In this little firm we are Republicans. The look on my face told him all he needed to know and the interview came to an abrupt halt. I had made the hour-and-a-half drive from Lexington solely to learn that I would not be practicing law in Hodgenville. I can’t say I was disappointed. The lawyer would continue his search for a new associate. I had intended to visit the Lincoln homeplace on my way out of town, but found I had suddenly lost interest. Maybe, another day.

A new book of Appalachian poetry by West Virginia poet laureate Marc Harshman

Dark Hills of Home, by Marc Harshman.  (Monongahela Books, 2022).  Illustrated with period engravings. 48 pages.  $10.

Every poem in Dark Hills of Home had its birth among the foothills and hollows of the western Alleghenies, between the Ohio and Monongahela rivers in the heart of Appalachia--- where the sun rises late and sets early, and the night is never entirely absent. 

Between Low Gap and Ramon

                                             In Memoriam: Jean Haley 

Over a road shoaled with fog and last light,
           she rode quietly
           in the first of the plastic seats,
           a mask of cigarette smoke among the others,
           the gray-silvered bus bending its way
           around the many turnings that swerve
           between Low Gap and Ramon,
           the roadside locusts a shivered blue of shadow
           wreathed in grape rope and poison. 

“Somewhere here,” she said, “somewhere
           between the culvert bridge and
           the Cox for Sheriff tree . . . he said
           a red box, must be a mailbox would be it,
           be a lane, and he would get me there.” 

But in that settling mist
           swept with light we saw nothing.
And so James, he backed in at the
           Rod & Gun Bar and worked over
           the way he’d come, the rest of us
           quiet for her
           who was quiet for something
           other than we might know. 

Her black hair an old nest of wind
           and her stiff, stern hands singly
           on each knee were a testimony
           to what? 

A small house, small money,
           small children? 

Coming past the Butcher turn
           around which the headlights would next catch
           the steel shine of the culvert
           that let Big Run dribble its way to the river,
           she leaned forward and mumbled—
           loud it came in the strained prayerfulness
           of strangers now a part of it:
“Here’ll be fine.”
“But ma’am, there’s nothing . . .”
“No, now this’ll be it here,
           somewhere’s close.”
And above the quiet of the engine
           as James pulled onto the berm
           I heard the crickets and peepers
           gathering for their nightly rehearsals.           

Out the window I could see her;
           shoulders straight, head turned,
           the diesel-heavy stench of the bus
           spilling over her.                                                                       

She would wait and trust,
           her will to believe insistent
           and a part of what she leaves
           behind for me
           wishing to believe like her
           that someone will be there
           to take us home.