Poetry – Page 6 – Denton Loving

My 2017 Reading List

December 31, 2017 Denton Loving1 Comment

Some year, I’m going to read 100 books within a space of 12 months. It wasn’t 2017 though. My list for this past year is so short, I’m almost ashamed to show it. But here it is anyway. Several of these books were read in manuscript form and aren’t available on the market yet. Look for them in 2018.

I’ve talked a lot about how problematic I find J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. And I never skip a chance to say again what a bad book it is. Beyond that, I recommend so many of the beautiful books on this list for various reasons.

I suppose the book I’m most proud of reading this year is Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. I started this book about 15 years ago–maybe longer. I suppose I wasn’t read y for McCarthy. And though I’ve read several of his other novels in the past decade, The Orchard Keeper sat on the shelf, never finished. Going back to it this year, I found it to be a really beautiful book, and I was glad I had kept it around all those years.

I’d love to hear what your favorite books were from 2017, or the one you’re most proud of reading. Let’s all read more this new year.

Here’s my full list:

1. Jim Wayne Miller – The Mountains Have Come Closer
2. J.D. Vance – Hillbilly Elegy
3. Alison Stine – Ohio Violence
4. Lincoln Michel – Upright Beasts
5. Ron Houchin – The Man Who Saws Us in Half
6. Iris Tillman Hill – All This Happened Long Ago – It Happens Now
7. Blas Falconer – A Question of Gravity and Light
8. Claudia Emerson – The Late Wife
9. Charles River Editors – The Library of Alexandria and the Lighthouse of Alexandria
10. Gerry Wilson – Crosscurrents and Other Stories
11-18. 8 manuscripts for a poetry contest
19. Mark Wunderlich – The Earth Avails
20. Timothy Liu – Don’t Go Back to Sleep
21. Anais Duplan – Take This Stallion
22. Peter LaBerge – Makeshift Cathedral
23. Jeanne Bryner – Both Shoes Off
24. Keith Lesmeister – We Could Have Been Happy Here
25. James Arthur – Charms Against Lightning
26. Ocean Vuong – Night Sky with Exit Wounds
27. Sean Frederick Forbes – Providencia
28. Clifford Garstang – Everywhere Stories Volume 2
29. Jenson Beach – Swallowed By the Cold
30. Adam Clay – Stranger
31. Joanne Nelson – If Not For the Mess
32. Katlin Brock – The Dead Always Stay OR Between the Wounds
33. Wes Sims – Taste of Change
34. Mark Powell – Small Treasons
35. Carol Grametbauer – Homeplace
36. Cormac McCarthy – The Orchard Keeper
37. Richard Hugo – The Triggering Town
38. Donald Morrill – Beaut
39. Lynne Sharon Schwartz – No Way Out But Through

Keegan Lester’s “A Psalm against J.D. Vance”

December 10, 2017 Denton Loving1 Comment

I’ve written and spoken much about my disgust for media darling J.D. Vance and his book, Hillbilly Elegy. If you don’t already know my position, you can check out my review of the book in issue #189 of Meredith Sue Willis’s Books for Readers. There have been far more articulate arguments against Vance’s terrible book, but up until now, most of those responses have been in the form of reviews and op-eds.

I was excited to discover that Keegan Lester responded in a beautiful poem, published recently online at Anastamos and well worth the read.

A Psalm against J.D. Vance by Keegan Lester

Spill a little lighting for Ryan & Marcus, Natalie, &
my great grandfather. Spill

a little lightning for Tom & Jason & Joe & Teresa.
Graveyards round here full

of people cause there’s a thousand ways into the mine,
a thousand ways to be

killed in the mine, cause the American coal miner
can only be seen in light

when they’re dead. The only time the media has a big interest
is the day after & one day a hundred years will pass

& they wont even love nature anymore,
& they will say what we did to the natives was genocide

& they will say what we did to those cities was apartheid
& they will say what we did to Appalachia was colonialism,

we treated them as if not our people, but things
to bring ore up out of a mountain,

& one day they will use the word slave
& one day they will let Appalachian children speak for themselves

& one day they will let Appalachian children into colleges
& not ask them to denounce the place they came from

their culture, their religion, their hands,
& one day they will let Appalachian children speak

& the Appalachian children will say you can’t lose but so much blood,
then the body

shutting down; it was cheaper to destroy a mountain
than put up a man to work underground,

my brother’s body mangled in such a way,
every bone crushed, I could not recognize him,

that’s what they gave us back
of the miners up at Upper Big Branch,

Don Blankenship’s employees, they were our friends, beneath the surface.
They were brave men at work.

Jeanne Bryner’s “Breach Calf”

March 7, 2017 Denton Loving1 Comment

Years ago, when I was a student at The Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers Workshop, I met Jeanne Bryner. We became instant friends, bonding over poems written about cows and calves, both of us having lived on or near cattle farms for much of our lives. Jeanne is an award winning poet, fiction writer and playwright. She was born in Appalachia and grew up near Warren, Ohio. She has a beautiful new book (her 7th) called Both Shoes Off, published by Bottom Dog Press. The book is filled with many wonderful poems, but here is one of my favorites from this new collection:

Breach Calf by Jeanne Bryner

The calf’s hind feet point to barn rafters.
Inside his mama, he dreams a baby brother,

how they sit the moon’s lap for a story.
Climbing down, he does a somersault, lands wrong.

And now, this farmer, his gloved arm pushes him
back and back and back, his mama strains at her plow.

Then, other rough men, special chains, metal wrapped
just below his knees, not wanting a cripple,

a calf who cannot run or play. Mama’s fresh blood,
pain’s awful hands squeeze, no breath for his whistle.

The beautiful boy asleep in clean straw,
but all in the manger are still,

save the bawling mother
washing her son, calling his name to the moon.

Alison Stine’s “Ohio Violence” and “On Poverty”

January 11, 2017 Denton LovingLeave a comment

Recently my friend William Kelley Woolfitt sent me an essay he thought I should see: Alison Stine’s “On Poverty” at The Kenyon Review. This essay was a response to an essay by Claire Vaye Watkins’ called “On Pandering.” Watkins’ essay received a lot of attention in literary circles, and there were many responses. But Alison Stine’s response is the best I have seen, and I wish more people would read it.

Earlier this week, I railed about J. D. Vance’s ignorant and stumbling assessment of Appalachia, the Rust Belt and the wider world in his poorly named memoir Hillbilly Elegy. One of my chief complaints about the book is that Vance addresses shockingly little about class structures and dynamics. Stine says infinitely more in her short essay than Vance says in his entire book.

alison-stine-ohio-violence

When I asked William to tell me more about Stine, he recommended her poetry collection, Ohio Violence, which I read this week and which I highly recommend. Ohio Violence was the 2008 winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, and she’s written three books since it. Stine’s website links to a number of individual poems and essays, but here is one from Ohio Violence that I especially like. This poem, “When I Taught Mary to Eat Avacado,” is also found at Verse Daily. I hope you’ll enjoy her work as much as I do.

When I Taught Mary to Eat Avacado

She didn’t understand.

You couldn’t cut straight through with the big knife
because of the pit, or heart, or stone.

We gave it many names,

and when it was revealed, bone-shade,
heavy-bottomed, she wanted to keep it.

She washed it, and the skin

dried and crackled, lost shards. I taught her to salt
the pebbled rim, and dig with the tip

of a spoon, which is like a knife.

The flesh curl surprises, but it’s a taste you’ll miss.
When she stole the story I told then,

how the Aztecs locked up virgins

during the avocado harvest, how this was repeated
to others in her own language,

I knew we were bound to take

what we could from each other and go.
I didn’t tell her what the name

for avocado meant, its connection

to the male body, which she wanted no part of,
which I am now a part of.

Perhaps that is the end

of the story, his flesh in my mouth. Perhaps
the women were not locked up,

but went, willing.

Category: Poetry

My 2017 Reading List

Recommended Reading 12/12/2017

Keegan Lester’s “A Psalm against J.D. Vance”

Recommended Reading 10/9/2017

Recommended Reading 8/4/2017

Jeanne Bryner’s “Breach Calf”

Recommended Reading 2/26/2017

Recommended Reading 1/16/2017

Alison Stine’s “Ohio Violence” and “On Poverty”

Recommended Reading 1/4/2017