by Marc 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. -- Doug Van Gundy, author of A Life Above Water
All That Feeds Us: 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. -- Meredith Sue Willis, author of Re-Visions: Stories from Stories and Higher Ground
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 Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New and Editor, Pitt Poetry Series
About the author:
Marc Harshman is the poet laureate of West Virginia. His full-length collection, GREEN-SILVER AND SILENT, was published in 2012 by Bottom Dog Press. His fourth chapbook, ALL THAT FEEDS US: THE WEST VIRGINIA POEMS came out from Quarrier Press in 2013. Periodical publications include Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, The Progressive, Appalachian Heritage, and the Roanoke Review. 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 THE STORM, a Smithsonian Notable Book. His children's titles have also been published in Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Danish, and Swedish. Marc has new children’s books forthcoming from Roaring Brook/Macmillan and Eerdmans. He lives in Wheeling, West Virginia and holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale University Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. He has also 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 and so on June 20th his poem “A Song for West Virginia” was presented in both Charleston and Wheeling as a part of the day-long festivities held that day.
Marc has published 11
children’s books and All That Feeds Us is his 4th book of
poetry. It is a collection of 22 of Marc’s poems that collectively is a tribute to the state.
What sets this collection of
poems apart from your other collections?
As
the sub-title indicates this volume contains poems that are specifically rooted
in my experience of West Virginia as my home for these past thirty-five
years.
Is being the poet laureate
for the state something you ever had dreamed of?
I
never dreamed of being the poet laureate. I don’t know if this is good or bad
but I have never seen myself as more than a journeyman poet, never a master.
Every day I get up and go to work, just like my father and mother before me.
Of course, my work is with words but every day I get up and when I set to my
work it is with the hope that I might learn something new, find a better way of
saying something that needs to be said.
Any upcoming events,
readings, or school visits for you?
I
have never been so busy. I’ll not mention specifically the various school
visits that are always sprinkled across my calendar but beyond them I know that
I am scheduled to present the key-note address for this year’s Letters About
Literature program sponsored by the WV Library Commission, will be leading a
workshop for this year’s Young Writers festivities – both in Charleston. I'll
also be delivering the key-note address for this year’s WV Writers conference at
Cedar Lakes. I have also been commissioned to write a poem for the WV
sesquicentennial celebrations by the Wheeling National Heritage Area and will be giving its
inaugural readings in Charleston and in Wheeling on June 20th.
You were born in Indiana,
but have lived in WV for most of your adult life. What qualities does WV have
that have kept you here and inspired so much of your work?
To
live in West Virginia means to live in a place of neighborhoods, whether rural
or urban, in a place where people know each other. Whether next door or out the
ridge, there are names and faces here I know and trust. Living in the foothills
west of the Ohio these past forty years has given a singular blessing to my work
as both poet and children’s writer. If I’ve been away and am traveling home I
love seeing that first rising rumple of the hill country. It is then I know I’m
soon to be re-united with family, or friends, or dog, or simply my steep back
yard and its scraggly garden beyond which stand locusts, cherry, beech, and tree
of heaven. Yes, tree of heaven, a junk wood mostly, but as metaphor very true,
these trees, these hills, “…almost heaven.”
What else? My wife and I
live in a simple house in Wheeling about two miles from the Ohio River. But
whether in town or deep in the countryside where we once lived, there goes on
here the kind of independence, self-reliance, neighboring, and husbandry that I
value, things which also profoundly nurture the attentiveness necessary to being
a writer. Beyond that, I know that to live in West Virginia is to live in the
region we call Appalachia. To paraphrase Wendell Berry I find that “region,” in
the sense it matters to me, is a place where "local life is aware of itself." I
have nearly always lived in such places. I know the name of the next street or
ridge and the creeks and hollows that surround it. I know the folks next door
and they know me. And they, too, know these names. And with these and much
else we can still speak with a shared language and a shared knowledge of
community. This is what matters most to me about West Virginia.
