Reader’s Corner

I was recently pleased to discover Diane Gilliam Fisher’s poetry collection Kettle Bottom (Perugia Press, 2004). Kettle Bottom takes place in a West Virginia coal camp during the mine wars of 1920–1921. I know some good songs about coal mining, but I learned a great deal more about it from Kettle Bottom than from anything else. Through her poems, Fisher personalizes the dark history of the coal camps, holding up to the light the otherwise obscure lives of the men and women who worked, died, mourned, and persevered there. All the poems are persona poems, in the voices of interrelated characters. Each captures a moment or experience for a particular person at a particular time—and together they tell a story. One young woman writes to her sister to warn her about marrying a miner: I’m telling you, Hazel, for the sake of your own / sweet soul, when Clayton kisses me now / I don’t taste nothing but coal.

No one poem tries to carry too much or make too grand a statement, staying true to a simple, bare authenticity. The details, the dialect, and the vocabulary all make these poems feel poignantly real. No Michelangelo / here to cut the stone away from the beautiful men, an Italian immigrant mourns—but that is exactly what Fisher accomplishes in this powerful book.

Also, keep an eye out for these recent poetry collections by Orion contributors:

Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010, by Maxine Kumin (W.W. Norton)
A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood, by Allen Braden (University of Georgia Press)
The Least of These, by Todd Davis (Michigan State University Press)
Rope, by Alison Hawthorne Deming (Penguin Poets)

Kettle Bottom
By Diane Gilliam Fisher
Perugia Press, 2005

Hannah Fries
Assistant Editor, Orion