These poems record the voices of those in the coal fields of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky whose lives have been affected by mountaintop removal coal mining.
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Under the indifferent eye of the death angel, King Coal, the West Virginians in this collection cope with flood, illness (physical and mental), poverty and pollution. Giant cranes behead mountains. Behemoth trucks thunder down narrow roads, the mystic Hindu juggernaut come alive. Strip mining is the new paradigm in a consumer society in love with giant economics. These aren't poems so much as character studies, carefully painted miniatures, cameos. They are the voice of the voicelsss. Plain sense and plain craziness. If this were a novel, the landscape would be the main character and the plot, what it does to people and what the people do to it. Mr. Depta has written a really fine book (and it couldn't have been easy to get right--and real). Few people writing are equally at home with plain folk talk/wisdom, nature and classical allusion. I hope this book gets the attention it deserves. --The Iconoclast, No 74
Azrael on the Mountain is a bold and angry confrontation of another set of realities. In some 40 dramatic monologues (and 8 other framing poems), Depta recounts how people from a variety of perspectives cope with the consequences of mountaintop removal. These characters are caught in a bind--should they stay in the mountains where they grew up even as those mountains are being ground to dust? Or should they bow their heads, sell their land, and head out for elsewhere? Those who do report that they feel they have lost themselves, but those who stay witness the deliberate, slow destruction of their homes. Depta stands to the challenge of demanding that we open our eyes and acknowledge the conundrum and consequences of coal and electricity (did you use your air conditioning this summer?), for ignorance and inaction that makes us all to blame. Do not read this book if you want to be idle...unless you have a strong love for stomaching the bile of your own apathy. In the final poem, even death has become severed from God. The angel Azrael, whose mission is to liberate the spirits of the dead and deliver them to the hand of God, loses a wing and falls to the earth (an innocent Lucifer): and Azrael woke to the scaffolding of his single wing girded to the sky and cried out-- Majesty, where am I? What is thy will? There is no answer. Instead, in hopeless imitation of his old service, the cast-out angel becomes incarnate in the crane used in mountaintop removal coal mining: Azrael, bereft of duty one-winged, plucked, absure, ignored by God drags himself in his grandeur grotesque, insanely on the mountain top back and forth. ...I stand in hope that there are publishers and writers in the mountains who dare to speak truths which are not easily heard. --Chris Green, Wind Magazine 91
Reading the poems in this collection made me realize that the Appalachian coalfields--the people who live there and the problems they encounter--are usually represented as small in scale and unimportant. These poems are the first I've seen that make manifest the epic scale and drama of the devastation in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. In language that is sometimes shocking in its blunt portrayal of those who have lived with this destruction for years, it presents the chaos in an operatic tableau. Combining allusions to Greek myth, the Bible and Zoroastrianism with images of gob piles, slurry dams, the Buffalo Creek flood and Blair Mountain, these poems connect the mythical and sublime with a blatantly exploited people. They do so honestly, bleakly and humorously, though with a bitter humor. --Edwina Pendarvis, author of Raft Tide and Railroad
Azrael on the Mountain is a bold and angry confrontation of another set of realities. In some 40 dramatic monologues (and 8 other framing poems), Depta recounts how people from a variety of perspectives cope with the consequences of mountaintop removal. These characters are caught in a bind--should they stay in the mountains where they grew up even as those mountains are being ground to dust? Or should they bow their heads, sell their land, and head out for elsewhere? Those who do report that they feel they have lost themselves, but those who stay witness the deliberate, slow destruction of their homes. Depta stands to the challenge of demanding that we open our eyes and acknowledge the conundrum and consequences of coal and electricity (did you use your air conditioning this summer?), for ignorance and inaction that makes us all to blame. Do not read this book if you want to be idle...unless you have a strong love for stomaching the bile of your own apathy. In the final poem, even death has become severed from God. The angel Azrael, whose mission is to liberate the spirits of the dead and deliver them to the hand of God, loses a wing and falls to the earth (an innocent Lucifer): and Azrael woke to the scaffolding of his single wing girded to the sky and cried out-- Majesty, where am I? What is thy will? There is no answer. Instead, in hopeless imitation of his old service, the cast-out angel becomes incarnate in the crane used in mountaintop removal coal mining: Azrael, bereft of duty one-winged, plucked, absure, ignored by God drags himself in his grandeur grotesque, insanely on the mountain top back and forth. ...I stand in hope that there are publishers and writers in the mountains who dare to speak truths which are not easily heard. --Chris Green, Wind Magazine 91
Reading the poems in this collection made me realize that the Appalachian coalfields--the people who live there and the problems they encounter--are usually represented as small in scale and unimportant. These poems are the first I've seen that make manifest the epic scale and drama of the devastation in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. In language that is sometimes shocking in its blunt portrayal of those who have lived with this destruction for years, it presents the chaos in an operatic tableau. Combining allusions to Greek myth, the Bible and Zoroastrianism with images of gob piles, slurry dams, the Buffalo Creek flood and Blair Mountain, these poems connect the mythical and sublime with a blatantly exploited people. They do so honestly, bleakly and humorously, though with a bitter humor. --Edwina Pendarvis, author of Raft Tide and Railroad
About the Author
Victor Depta was born in the coal fields of southern West Virginia, in mountains both beautiful and decimated. Mining, including strip and mountaintop stripping, has created a blight on the wilderness which affects everyone in the area. One of the most graphic incidents of such destruction is the Buffalo Creek flood of 1972 in which one of his uncles and five cousins were drowned in the black slurry. Victor Depta received an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in American literature from Ohio University. He has published in other genres: drama, the novel, the short story, and the essay. He is publisher and co-editor of Blair Mountain Press.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Captures,
By Reeves Kirtner (Culloden, West Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Azrael on the Mountain (Paperback)
Victor Depta is the first person since Lee Maynard(author of Crum)to truly capture the images of rural West Virginia. "Azrael on the Mountain" is a collection of poems that one cannot put down. One will keep reading to see what he will say next. Some may find him offensive, but others, like me, find him as a realist.
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