Under the Watchful Eye: Poetry and Discourse

Roger Nash is a professor of philosophy at Laurentian University and the
author of Night Flying.

The 11 poems in this collection powerfully evoke the landscape of West
Virginia, where the poet grew to manhood. Geographical and human
landscapes are inextricably bound. In “Husk,” Deahl celebrates the
endurance of farmers bringing in a crop of frozen corn. “Hiorra”
depicts the courage of a now-defunct coal-mining community. In “Blue
Ridge,” the speaker observes, “All day the gelding / drew plough
through tight brown soil: / site of the Union dead.”

A videotape and audiocassette accompany the book. The latter pairs the
poet’s voice with the excellent and original bluegrass guitar of D.C.
Fitzgerald. While this multimedia approach should make the book more
accessible, this reviewer found Deahl’s somewhat declamatory and
self-conscious readings an uneasy match for the simple tone of the
poems.

The structure of the book is curious. The first 31 pages are devoted to
poetry and discourse; the remaining 19 pages consist of an edited
interview. The interview is fascinating and revealing, but its insights
would have been better incorporated in an extended work of poetry and
discourse. As it is, the shift from poetry to interview is too jarring.