Following the Silence

Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of West Virginia, offers up his newest full-length collection of poems and demonstrates his dependably keen observational skills that elevate landscapes and people into an almost mythic realm. In many of the poems there is, as well, a threatening presence from whose grim circumstances he wrestles, if not hope, glimmers of its possibilities. And always there are signature poems like "Poet in the Schools" that simply lift off the page with a storyteller's finesse "for every single one of us / who's ever been called on / who's felt hung out to dry, been picked last, / been poked, tripped, and toppled, / lost, strung out, yearning, abused, dying / somewhere out of sight / in our private universes, and he, he has opened the rooms / of paradise / for us to see / how simply easy it is / to smile. . ."