"Soupbean: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature" by Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, et. al.

After thirty or more years of periodic searches on used book websites, I finally located a copy of "Soupbean: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature" by Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, et. al, a group of Appalachian writers connected to The Soupbean Poets Collective of Antioch College/Appalachia. The book was published by Mountain Union Books of Beckley, WV, in 1977. Mountain Union Books was an imprint which was briefly operated by Antioch College Appalachia, which was a branch of Antioch College of Yellow Springs, Ohio. This branch campus was created by Antioch College in the early 1970's, initially opening in Huntington, WV, and after a couple of years relocated to Beckley. The branch was operated for roughly 8 years before being shuttered by the mother institution which had created a group of such campuses in California, Alaska, West Virginia, and one or two other locations. The campus in Beckley was never large with an annual enrollment which was generally less than 100 students. But Antioch Appalachia, which also operated briefly as The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, was staffed by several of the best writers in all of Appalachian Studies including Robert "Bob" Snyder, P. J. Laska, Don West, Bill Blizzard, Rod Harless, and Yvonne Snyder Farley. The campus also produced several well known authors of Appalachian Literature most of whom are still writing and publishing today. During the brief life of the campus, four of its female students were featured in an issue of "MS Magazine" as "Women Writers of Appalachia". Those four women were Gail Amburgey; Pauletta Hansel who eventually became the first Poet Laureate of Cincinatti, Ohio; Peggy Dotson Hall, now deceased; and Sylvia Evans. I ahve to admit that I have never met either Evans or Hall and know little about any subsequent work they did. But I have known both Gail Amburgey and Pauletta Hansel for years and read a great deal of both women's work. Other published student writers who attended or graduated from Antioch included the late Joseph Barrett who has two published books as the product of his brief life; Bob Henry Baber, the eventual mayor of Richwood, West Virginia, and the author or editor of several books. I am proud to say that I was briefly a student at Antioch Appalachia but didn't complete a degree there. I have published fiction and nonfiction in a dozen states and one foreign country. My first collection of short stories is pending publication at this time in late June 2026. I always have and always will say that being exposed to the faculty and students at Antioch Appalachia and the high level of education they provided was the greatest influence on my writing. Antioch Appalachia was a wellspring of and for writers and writing in Central and Southern Appalachia. In addition to the Appaachian writers who were produced by the campus, two other students achieved success in divergent fields. Sam Farley, a Vietnam veteran and eventual social worker who in 2007 was in 2007 recognized by The National Association of Social Workers, West Virginia Chapter, with the Catalyst Award for Direct Social Work Practice. Barbara Placier Ervin, another graduate of Antioch Appalachia became a professor at Lander University in South Carolina and served as Director of Montessori Education at that institution where she earned the Mary Frances Poole Alston Award, which is presented to a faculty or staff member who has provided "visibility for Lander University throughout the state of South Carolina, the United States and the world" which was a recognition of her internationally recognized work in her field. By percentage of the student body, this group of highly successful individuals stand out very favorably in comparison to nearly any other college in the nation. The book being reviewed here contains writing from several members of that group including Pauletta Hansel, Gail Amburgey, Mary Joan Coleman, Bob Henry Baber, and Joseph Barrett. It also includes work by Bob Snyder, P.J. Laska, and Yvonne Snyder Farley who all served as faculty of Antioch Appalachia. This little book contains the powerful and sometimes biting poetry of Gail Amburgey who was a survivor of the Buffalo Creek Flood and one of two Antioch Appalachia products who went on to be among the early female coal miners in Appalachia. Gail's writing is frequently colored by her exposure to that flood which was a glaring example of everything that can go wrong when an American industry is underregulated and its actions go awry. It also contains contributions from Joseph Barrett who published poetry in numerous journals around the world before his untimely death at only 39. There is also some fine writing by former student David Chaffins who became a career Navy noncom. Jim Wayne Miller, who was a professor of German at Western Kentucky University and a well recognized writer of literature in Appalachia, also contributed to this book which must be considered a complement to the little college that could. This is a generally difficult little book to find for sale since it was issued in a small edition in 1977. But if you can locate a copy, buy it, read it, come to enjoy one of the most productive institutions to ever exist in Appalachia and Appalachian Literature. You won't be disappointed.!

"So Much To Be Angry About, Appalachian Movement Press and Radical DIY Publishing, 1969-1979" by Shaun Slifer--Comments On A Book

This book was published by West Virginia University Press in 2021, and I read it shortly after it was released since I had known the primary subject of the book, Tom Woodruff, who built and ran Appalachian Movement Press for its entire effective life before he left the publishing industry to become a union organizer for Local 1199 and to eventually rise to be its national leader.  About a week ago, I had posted a blog post about John Hennen's excellent book, "A Union For Appalachian Healthcare Workers, The Radical Roots and Hard Fights of Local 1199". That review of Hennen's book is available at the link above.Tom Woodruff, the primary subject of this book founded Appalachian Movement Press in 1969 and ran it in Huntington, West Virginia, where he had attended Marshall University.  During several years of the life of the press, Tom was also an adjunct professor at The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, a branch campus of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which had been founded by Robert "Bob" Snyder. The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antoch College was initially founded in Huntington, West Virginia, and after a short time, was moved to Beckley, West Virginia, for the remainder of its existence.  The press published a large number of excellent, small publications with political leanings to the political left by authors including Don West, Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, Rod Harless, and Woodruff himself. Don West eventually bought the printing equipment of the press from Tom Woodruff and transported it to the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, where he managed to use the equipment to produce a few pamphlets primarily of his own political oriented writings.  But the equipment was stored in the watery basement of a chapel at the Folklife Center and fell into disrepair due to the fact that West could not operate it himself and had no full time printer who knew the intricacies of operating and maintaining such equipment which Woodruff had actually bought used, and we might say "well used".  

 

In 2016, Shaun Slifer and  his wife paid a visit to the Folklife Center during which he discovered the press and a large amount of publications both from the time when Woodruff had operated it in Huntington and those few items which Don West has managed to publish after he bought the equipment.  Slifer salvaged as much of the publications as he could and wrote this book about the press and Woodruff.  He also implied in the book that there were other such Do It Yourself, radical leaning presses in the Appalachian Region at the time.  But the book contains little or no actual information about any of those other presses. It is fortunate that Slifer managed to stray into the press and publications, salvage as much as he could, and took the initiative to write the book.  It is, however, unfortunate that he did inadequate research and writing about the other implied presses of a similar nature.  That work remains for some other interested researcher and writer, if one ever appears on the scene.  I knew both Tom Woodruff and Don West, spent a period of time as a student at The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, and lived for about a year at the Folklife Center. That entire series of experiences was one of the formative influences in my adult life as a writer and political activist.  I am grateful that as much was salvaged as has been of the publications.  They are a genuinely important piece of the history of the leftward leaning political actions which were taking place in West Virginia and Appalachia at that time.  There are some excellent photographs of some of the publications in the book which can serve as clues for any future researchers and writers who may take on the task of completing the job which Slifer began. I am proud to say that I own a few of the publications from that period. This book was a beginning but nowhere near the work which deserves to be produced about the Appalachian Movement Press, the Appalachian South Folklife Center during the time Don West was operating it himself, and of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College at which Bob Snyder assembled one of the finest collections of Appalachian educators, political activists, and writers which has ever been in one location in the region for any significant period of time. That assemblage of people included both the faculty and several of the students who have gone on to produce effective works about, for, and in defense of Appalachia. All three organizations deserve to have their history(ies) fully and adequately told and preserved for the future in a single work which would address the interconnections and influences which existed between them.  Slifer's book did not even begin to scratch the surface of that collective history and the interconnections of the triumvirate.  Due to the fact that both West and Woodruff taught at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College and several students at Antioch worked with either Woodruff or West and, in some cases, lived at the Folklife Center, this complete story needs to be adequately addressed by another better researcher and writer.  But Slifer's book is worth reading for the student of Appalachia and Appalachian History.  The image below is of a literary journal which was produced by the students and faculty of The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College and produced at Appalachian Movement Press. 

"Milky Way Accent & Selected Work" by Robert "Bob" Snyder--Book Review

 

Nearly two months ago, on October 2, 2020, I received in my mail as a total surprise a copy of the new posthumous poetry collection, "Milky Way Accent & Selected Work" by Robert "Bob" Snyder which had been gifted to me by Bob's widow Peggy.  She and Bob's sister, Yvonne Snyder Farley had worked with Dos Madres Press to get the work published on which Bob had apparently been working when he died twenty-five years ago.  First and foremost, let me say that I have always thought that Bob Snyder was one of that very small handful of poets for whom it could be argued that they were the best the state of West Virginia had ever produced.  Bob had self-published several small collections of poetry, both individually and in joint works with former National Book Award Finalist P. J. Laska and Joseph Barrett.  Bob had also published numerous non-fiction articles during his lifetime in a variety of journals including "Appalachian Heritage", "The Journal of Appalachian Studies", and others.  But this is his first, and, sadly, probably his last book from a recognized publisher of poetry.   

Just as Bob Snyder was a complex and multi-talented man, this is a complex book of poetry. Bob was an aficionado of jazz, blues, scat, and Bluegrass music.  He loved the rural areas and small milltowns of West Virginia along with the mean streets of Appalachian Cincinnati where he lived and listened to bluegrass while finishing his masters degree at the University of Cincinnati.  As you read his book, you will hear scat riffs, blues laments, and fiery hot Bluegrass runs straight from the hills of Appalachia which Bob Snyder loved.  Two of my favorite older poems from Bob are included in this work: "Aubade" which was imprinted on a limited edition broadside shortly after his death in 1995 and is considered by many of his admirers as his poetic masterpiece, and "Grandma", a subtly powerful poem written from the viewpoint of a grandson who found his grandmother's old purse "...stiff as a weed in winter with a fading goldengold  clasp..." and, in a moment of connection, grief, and respect "...from your very last pack smoking one of your Phillip Morrises...".  That, my friends, is poetry from West Virginia, born and bred in those green, fog shrouded mountains both pristine and ravaged depending on which creek or branch you travel up or down, which ridge you cross or simply can't find anymore in the silt working its way down the Kanawha River. The other poem, "Aubade" which I consider Bob's masterpiece is paean to love in rhythmic, flowing, trilling syllables which worm their way into your brain and never leave..."if thieves come baby and steal the chairs we won't get up    won't go nowheres".  It captures that moment all lucky people have or have hoped for when love was ripe, young, fervid, and articulate requiring nothing except the presence of that one you love in a quiet room where memories are made for an entire lifetime.  

If you love Appalachia, West Virginia, flowing language, and sweet, bucolic phrasing which can turn suddenly into the sound of a neighbor's barking, biting dog tied on a short chain to a porch post in the head of a holler where you have to walk by on your way home while hoping the chain holds, this is the book of poetry for you.  If you love to see a brilliant poet who could carry on a lucid conversation with Rilke or Sappho just minutes after drinking Raleigh County moonshine with the man who made it in the middle of a moonlit night, this is the book of poetry for you.  If you love language, linguistic tricks, subtle phrasing mixed with sledge hammer blows, sweet words scattered through a lover's quarrel, or just damn fine, down home poetry, this is the book for you.  If you do not know the poetry of Bob Snyder, you need to meet the man as he appears on the pages of this little jewel.  You need to imagine spending an evening listening to Bob read his work in a Vine Street bar or watching him perform great scat without a musical instrument.  Buddy, you need to read this book. 

The New River Gorge And Our 25th Anniversary

Last week, my wife Candice and I traveled to Beckley, WV, for three days on the road to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.  We had been married at the main overlook of Grandview National Park 25 years ago.  It was the first time we had been back to the park since our wedding.  We left home on Tuesday, June 20, 2017, and traveled over the river and through the woods to Beckley where we stayed in a Hampton Inn Motel for two nights and did a couple of days of semi-touristy things in the Beckley area.  When we leave our home in West Liberty, KY, to go toward Beckley, I always prefer to take US 460 to Salyersville, KY, and then KY 40 all the way to Inez, KY, in Martin County.  Then we cross the Tug River at Warfied, KY, and Kermit, WV.  Then I go up US 52, the Tolsia Highway, to Naugatuck, WV, and up the creek to US119 in the Delbarton area where we turn toward Logan.  At Logan, we take WV 10 to the mouth of Huff Creek above Man, WV, where we go to Oceana, WV, and then across the mountain above Kopperston, WV, down through Little Jimmie Dickens' hometown of Bolt, WV, and into Beckley.  

Taffy Likes To Help Us Pack Photo By Roger D. Hicks

It is a lovely drive across a major section of Appalachian Kentucky and West Virginia and has always been one of my favorite trips when I have the time to drive slowly and enjoy the sights.  We got to the motel in Beckley and found it to be a lot like any other Hampton Inn we have ever stayed in.  They always have good to better wheelchair accessible bathrooms, are clean, serve a breakfast buffet, and are competitively priced with other motels in any area.  We have never seen a bedbug in a Hampton Inn which is a qualifying factor in today's world of rampant bedbugs in motels.  We ate lunch on the trip at Pizza Hut in Stollings, WV, just outside Logan in mid-afternoon and didn't eat out for supper in Beckley.  In the late 1980's, I lived in Logan and Williamson and usually went to that particular Pizza Hut with a group of good friends including Jim and Phyllis Ferrell, Eve Downey, Gabe and Jewell Mobley, and a varying assortment of others from week to week.  Pizza Hut in Stollings was a disappointment.  We both had individual pizzas and shared an order of cinnamon sticks.  The pizzas were minimally acceptable and the service was adequate.  It was actually interesting to find a Pizza Hut which still had a dining room.  But the area in Stollings has deteriorated over time.  The restaurant decor was ugly and cheap.  The parking lot was aged, grass grown, cracked, and going down hill fast. Several businesses which used to be in Stollings are no longer there including a major automobile dealership.  We ate and ran.  

Candice At The Bridge Overlook Photo By Roger D. Hicks

As we left the Logan area, we ran into the ongoing construction to turn WV 10 into a four lane highway and it is actually finished most of the way from Three Mile Curve above Stollings to the mouth of Huff Creek.  While I understand the need to build superhighways in WV, Route 10 has always been one of my favorite roads in all of Appalachia and now it is just not the same.  A great deal is lost when you shoot past the town of Man and the mouth of Buffalo Creek without even seeing them.  That old crooked, dangerous two lane highway hanging between the mountains and the Guyandotte River between Stollings and Man was always one of the most interesting and picturesque drives in all of West Virginia and Appalachia.  Some of the cuts, in order to build the road rival those on US 119 between Williamson, WV, and Neon, KY. 

Roger At The Bridge Overlook Photo By Candice Hicks

We also drove into downtown Logan looking for a place to eat before we went on to Stollings.  That is a whole other sad story.  Downtown Logan is virtually non-existent with several parking lots where there were stores in the 1980's.  The hustle and bustle of an Appalachian town is no longer apparent in Logan.  The street corners are infested with numerous apparent denizens of the drug epidemic.  Several appeared to be prostitutes and/or drug dealers.  We couldn't find a decent place to stop for a meal in downtown Logan and moved on to the run down Pizza Hut in Stollings.  My thousands of pleasant memories of life in Logan in the 1980's will need to suffice.  

Roger And Candice At Grandview Photo By Roger D. Hicks

After we turned up Huff Creek, the drive was extremely pleasant as it had been across Magoffin, Johnson, and Martin Counties in Kentucky.  The old two lane was familiar territory where I had worked numerous days as a salesman.  I could point to several houses and tell stories of my encounters and sales in them.  Oceana, WV, is still Oceana, WV, Thank God!  It is just another quiet little court house town in a small county in WV.  People still have friendly conversations with strangers.  The same little family businesses still compete with one or two franchises like McDonald's.  You can feel at home after you drop off Huff Mountain into the county seat.  Kopperston is still a dying coal camp.  The tipple is still rusting away at the head of the creek.  That old crooked road still leads through the coal camp, past the empty company store, and over the mountain into Raleigh County where a hundred years ago a tiny little boy named Jimmy Dickens was learning to be the center of attention in any crowd while hiding behind a pawn shop guitar.  Bolt is always like a breath of fresh air to me.  

Candice At Grandview Photo By Roger D. Hicks

When we got up on the morning of June 21, 2017, we ate the motel buffet breakfast, encountered an elderly couple with the husband, a former pharmaceutical representative, taking care of his wife who exhibited the uncertainties and repetitions of Alzheimer's Disease.  I admired the man on two mornings as he continued to care for his wife in her deterioration.  She was friendly and struck up a conversation with Candice, asking the same questions every couple of minutes, but showing eighty years of manners and sociability while her husband showed sixty years of love and a quiet determination to go down swinging in the face of her disease.  

The New River From Grandview Photo By Roger D. Hicks

We left the motel to go to the Raleigh County Library to copy a short story I wrote in the 1970's from one of the few extant copies of "What's A Nice Hillbilly Like You...".  The library staff were helpful.  The copier worked.  I rescued that old story for another rewrite and, perhaps, inclusion in a collection when I publish them some day.  The library was giving away discards and I found an autographed copy of poetry from a local woman named Edith Williams Toner.  The inscription was to a neighbor who had helped the elderly Ms. Toner and her husband as they fought the snow and ice of a New River Plateau winter.  I always question why librarians discard such books by local authors and I was glad to be there to catch that one before it hit the dumpster.  I also found an interesting children's book from 1947 called "Nellie And The Mayor's Hat" written and illustrated by Charlotte Baker.  It is fascinating because nearly all of the characters have Hispanic names and that was a rarity in the 1940's. I also found an Arthur Hailey medical novel called "The Final Diagnosis A Novel About Love, Life, And Death In A Hospital".  When I was a high school student, making the transition from adolescent literature to serious literature, I had read a few Hailey novels in the old library of Knott County High School.  I am glad I was there to rescue all three of those books while I was passing through Beckley.  

We left the library and traveled to Tamarack, the West Virginia cultural and artistic sales facility near I-64.  We walked through the building, enjoyed the art works, talked to the staff, and I  bought two books by Lee Maynard, who just died the week before.  I had never known Lee Maynard and had never read any of his work.  But following his death, I had read some of the biographical information and just had to sample a Lee Maynard book or two.  I bought "Crum", the novel which had been banned from the shelves at Tamarack for a few years because of its reputed anti-West Virginia bent.  I also bought "The Pale Light Of Sunset".  I just had to buy and read some of his work after learning that his book had been banned, at least in Raleigh County, for a while.  I firmly believe that every American reader should make a point to read at least one banned book a year in order to support free speech and a free press.  Both are endangered on a daily basis by the TRAITOR Donald Trump and his crimes must be confronted if America and the world are to be safe.  

Candice wanted to go to Summersville to see the New River Gorge Bridge since she had never seen it.  We took the drive and stopped to eat lunch in a Panera Bread store, an experience which I hope to never repeat.   We spent a half hour or so at the bridge overlook area and shot a few photos, talked to a few tourists including a woman from Michigan who walked up to the window in the visitor center and literally gasped, "We don't have anything like that in Michigan."  Then we drove back to Grandview and spent an hour or two at the park reminiscing about our wedding and the 25 years since then.  Candice had walked down the stone path to the main overlook for the ceremony and I rolled her down it in a wheelchair for our return trip.  The day was beautiful.  The river was calm with only a few rafters since it was the middle of the week.  Buzzards flew below us.  Flowers were blooming.  It was a wonderful day on the New River.  

That night we went to dinner at a restaurant called The Char where Candice had escargot and a bone in rib eye.  I had a large Filet Mignon and the best bread pudding I have ever had.  The restaurant is set off the highway on a former farm, has a pond with a swan and a fountain, valet parking if you desire it, and a menu which is up to snuff in most other towns.  

The next morning, we left Beckley after the motel buffet and another conversation with the elderly couple.  We drove back across the mountains, down the Guyandotte River, across the Tug River, and into the Licking River Valley to home.  It was a trip well worth taking, both to Beckley and the New River Gorge this month and down all those 25 years of twists and turns since that day long ago when we got married at the Main Overlook of Grandview National Park. 

"SEASONS IN THE RAVINE" by P. J. Laska--Book Review

Laska, P. J. 2017 Seasons In The Ravine A Suite Of Poems (Bedford, NH Igneus Press)

On February 25, 2017, I made my usual trip to the mail box expecting to find my usual nondescript collection of junk mail and bills to find a small manila envelope with the Arizona return address of my long time friend and mentor, P. J. Laska.  Naturally, my assumption was that it would be a book or pamphlet of some kind and I knew it would be both interesting and pertinent to these times and my life.  When I opened the package, my sense of surprise was raised to even higher levels.  It contained a copy of "Seasons In The Ravine A Suite Of Poems" which I had not known was due for release.  I immediately sent Laska a message of thanks and began fitting the book into my heavy pile of current reading, most of which is politically motivated these days.  I figured I deserved a break from my recent fare and began reading the book, as I do all poetry, in short sessions with only a few poems at a time to improve my retention, appreciation, and understanding of the material.  The book contains a suite of 22 poems (actually 20 interconnected poems and 2 addenda based on the Dao De Jing and other Oriental poetry and philosophy).  The poems were written more than a decade ago when Laska was still living in Beckley, WV, where I first met him in 1974 just after he became a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry.  His home in Beckley was located on a residential street which placed it directly behind Jimmy's Place, a small bar and Beckley institution for more than fifty years.  Laska's lot was on a steep hillside which placed his front door at street level and the lot immediately plummeted to the little stream far below which divided his property from that of Jimmy's Place.  His house was composed to two stories and a basement which was earth sheltered on the street side and open to the sun on the ravine side.  The peak of the roof must have been more than forty feet from the ground.  This description does not seem to bode well for a place to live but it was perfect for a Buddhist poet.  The lot dropped off from the street to the stream and was shaded by numerous tall trees.  The stream usually ran water most of the year and, combined with the trees, it made a wonderful habitat for birds, small game, and stray cats.  Laska built a small gazebo like hut just above the high water line and used it for meditation and writing.  It was an ideal situation except for the persistent possibility that one might break a neck descending from the street to the hut.  The ravine and the trees also served to profoundly baffle the traffic noise from the major thoroughfare on which Jimmy's Place sits. 

P. J. Laska Photo By Roger D. Hicks

In that environment, Laska wrote the poems contained in "Seasons In The Ravine...".  He has told me that he was working to capture the flow of the seasons in that secluded spot in which he spent most of his time in those days.  The poems begin in spring and end in winter.  They are woven from cloth made of trees, birds, Buddhism, stray cats, and solitude.  They are excellent poetry and I have told Laska himself they contain some of the finest writing I have seen from him in years.  They prove that a committed man can find peace and solitude within earshot of a popular West Virginia watering hole.  They prove that an observant person can learn much about life and the world while seeking solitude.  They reflect Laska's long interest in Chinese poetry and the Dao. They are well worth reading but if you want to own a copy you need to contact Igneus Press sometime soon.  It is a limited edition.  If you do not obtain a copy very soon, you will find it only in selected libraries and personal collections.  I will not loan my copy. 

Roger D. Hicks & P. J. Laska Photo By Candice Hicks

My personal favorites among the poems, which are numbered and untitled, are #4, #12, #13, and #16.  Those poems are woven together to tell stories about a poet, a long dead baby, a one-eyed tomcat, and life.  In #4, we find the poet:

          

"Reaching in with gloved hand, he rubbed

the name and date of a child that died before

           the age of one."

Then the poet allows the seasons to flow with their myriad gifts until we find him in #12 climbing out of the ravine toward home accompanied by a one-eyed tomcat whom he has named Marco Polo.

         "The abbot admired the one-eyed wanderer
          living his last season in retirement, and fed
          him from the bag he kept behind the door."

In #12, the poet (for many years Laska has been "the abbot" in his poetry) has bonded with a wandering one-eyed tomcat.  In my personal experience, many of the poets I have known and loved best  have been a great deal like wandering tomcats finding love, poems, and a life somewhere along an unscheduled and unpredictable road.  The sharing of food, whether with a new human friend or a wandering tomcat, is always a major step forward in a relationship, especially in the hills of Appalachia and Raleigh County. Poem #12 also shows us a deepening of the relationship between a tomcat and a poet who are both enjoying those shady days near the end of an unpredictable road in a quiet ravine where peace, understanding, and friendship are possible. 

 In #13, we find Marco Polo "...off wandering the silk road..." and we learn that "...It's because the small is great that hawks and owls know that the mice will continue to thrive."  Such poetry, such observation of the natural world, and such melding of that natural world into one's understanding of the human world is a great deal of what separates great poets like Laska from ordinary men who only admire the hawks, owls, and tomcats from a distance. 

Poem #16 brings us to "the frozen wanderer stiff as a board" after a snowy night and

"

the abbot took him to the lot of the empty house

across the stream, where he stumbled on the child's headstone. R.I.P for Marco.

a certain fate, an oracle of bones.

If you don't find him on the hill,

look in the ravine. In time

their skeletons may intertwine

and stay still while the land works

its changes..."

It is writing like that which separates poets from transcribers.  It is observation of nature like that which separates naturalists from hikers.  It is that kind of melding with one's environment which might one day  save the planet.  I would strongly suggest that you contact Igneus Press and purchase your copy of the limited edition of "Seasons In The Ravine A Suite Of Poems" by P. J. Laska.  And to repeat myself, I will not loan my copy.  Thank you, Pete! 

"