james wright, to the ohio

[cseresznie.livejournal.com]

This is the not a poem . . .
This is the cold-blooded plea of a homesick vampire
To his brother and friend.
If you do not care one way or another about
The preceding lines,
Please do not go on listening
On any account of mine.
Please leave the poem.
Thank you.
. . .
Work be damned, the kind
Of poetry I want
Is to lie down with my love.
. . .
I don't have anything
Except my brother
And many of our waters in our native country . . .
And when they break,
They break in a woman's body,
They break in your man's heart,
And they break in mine.

Comments

[degram.livejournal.com]

hooray for our valiant Appalachian! When I first moved away from West Virginia, I moved to Seattle, WA (of course, because i do like a drama), and was terribly homesick. And then, in a great used bookstore (like they have in seatown), I found James Wright's "Appalachia." I'd never read him before and it's possible that finding him at that moment kept me from leaving seattle from a sheer sense of loss of landscape. He helped me grieve, because one could tell he grieved the landscape too. This poem you've posted is a clean example of that.

thank you for posting it.