Hillbilly Guilt

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Hillbilly Guilt is populated with those whose lives aren't deemed important: the poor and working poor of Appalachia, who live what it is to be American.This is a book that seeks to show that we are the sum of our mistakes. Not just the little goofs, either, but the huge, world-shattering blunders that go to the core of what it is to be human. The title poem "Hillbilly Guilt"-the frontispiece and forward to the book as a whole-asserts moments of resilience if not Triumph, the chance to heal if not a deliverance from the possibility of further injury: I waved someone down who took us to a hospital.I recall he broke his nose. That it bled and bledand that he wanted me to believe what he saidhappened, had happened that way. He seemed to want not to feel what he felt at having riskedour lives for nothing. Oh, and I have to tell you: the Chevy-to-a-hospital that stopped had a Virgin Mary on its curving, blue dashboard and that plasticfigure said what it said about having a little faith.These poems exist in a kind of Twilight Zone of expectation and hope and knowing that country by a whole bunch of names. As a survivor of the Great American Beating We Give Ourselves for Falling Short, the writer invites us to live, innocent and less so-as in the poem "Lazarus, Later" Don't get me wrong. I was in a hurry to flee the tomb.Quick to step from one imperium of flesh into another.However, I paused a short while to let my eyes adjust.Not to be honored or genuflect but to let it all sink in.