Reviews

Waking by Ron Rash

mawalker1962's review against another edition

5.0

Even if you don't like poetry, I think you'll love this book. Little gems of stories packed into poems, they bring to life people of the Southern Appalachians and many other places. I'm particularly fond of the first three sections.

serenaac's review against another edition

4.0

Waking by Ron Rash — a collection of poems broken up into five parts — and the cover’s barren landscape with its snowed in vehicle is a perfect depiction of the run down landscape presented in the first selection of poems. From “Woodshed in Watauga County” (page 7) “as mud daubers and dust motes/drifted above like moments/unmoored from time, and the world/” and from “Junk Car in Snow” (page 8), “No shade tree surgery could/revive its engine, so rolled/into the pasture, left stalled/among cattle, soon rust-scabs/” Rash does desolation and emptiness well, but he also just as easily paints vivid imagery reminiscent of lucid dreams and the lingering impression of those dreams during the stages of waking. In “Milking Traces” (page 5), “those narrow levels seemed like/belts worn on the hill’s bulged waist,/if climbed straight up, tall steps for/stone Aztec ruins–though razed/”

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2011/10/waking-by-ron-rash.html