Reckonings

There is a price for what may be considered progress. In his debut collection, centered around the cracked industrial-pastoral of Appalachia, Walsh asks who rung up the ecological tab and who will be implicated by this line of questioning. Above the banks of polluted rivers and decimated communities, a harvest of mountain and man; a bounty of pine and cellular tower has been reaped. There are those complicit in the sowing of such rewards, and through stunning syntax and mapping the bucolic’s role in the creation of present and future, Walsh asks if the means can justify the ends. Who is accountable when noble intentions irreparably wound the hidden corners of the Earth? Among these poems is a life lived in the shadow of technological progress and urban advantage. These poems plot the broken places, add topography to the image reflected in the shattered screen of a smart phone, and unite humanity in a shared culpability while also celebrating the perseverance and persistent beauty of the natural world.

Ryan Walsh was born and raised in West Virginia. He is the author of two chapbooks, Reckoner (2015) and The Sinks (2011) and holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared in Blackbird, Ecotone, Field, Forklift, Ohio, Narrative, and elsewhere. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.