Dispatch from the Mountain State

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(105 105 105 1)>Dispatch from the Mountain State </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(105 105 105 1)>encompasses the trademark themes of a mature poet-death despair dread and the seeming randomness with which all of these come into life. The dispatches provide if sometimes obliquely a keen awareness of the troubled times within which we live whether the flashpoint be race the recent pandemic or the reckless onslaught of the Appalachian mining industry which is masterfully addressed in the long poem The Breach. Harshman's distinctive vision remains both surreal and familiar whether expressed in a sonnet or the more common free-verse characteristic of most of his work. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(105 105 105 1)>This collection of over forty poems sings with a fluid voice and dazzles with imagery that surprises and rings true often underlain by and intertwined with the darker threads of our common living and dying as contemporary Appalachians. It is rare to find a poet like Harshman who is deeply connected to the life of rural America and yet writes poetry untouched by any sentiment for the old ways found there. </span></p><p></p>