Following the Silence

<p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>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 </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>not</em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> 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. . . </span></p>