Reading the Ground

Tera Vale Ragan celebrates the powers of language, heritage, and family in this inventive first collection. Selected for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection by judge Jeanne Larsen, Reading the Ground, Larsen says, gives us "Lessons in the Slovak Language-which is to say, lessons in every mother's tongue. They rise out of the great American tale of immigration, embrace the great American mill-town of the 20th century, and make the great American journey to an unknown old country. Ragan's consummately woven text is a 21st century book: a brilliant meta-poem; a double-helix of artful words; a gathering that satisfies, sings, erupts." According to Paul Hoover, this is "a rich feast of poems relating to the poet's Slovakian heritage, structured over historical time. It begins with the proposal of her grandfather by tossing a silk handkerchief at his sweetheart's feet. While the wedding guests dance a czardas, there's a terrible act of violence, followed by ritual revenge, imprisonment, and migration to the Duquesne area of Pittsburgh aboard the Aquitania. This is eloquent, moving, and necessary poetry." And Al Young, Poet Laureate for California 2005-2008, says: "With feet planted on ancestral soil, this young American poet celebrates roots, landscape, custom, kinship, émigré culture, storytelling, language and life. As our earliest ancestors read rivers, foliage, clouds and the heavens, so Ragan reads and re-imagines the Slovak heritage that fuels her bloodline. In its originality, artfulness, and downright soulfulness, Reading the Ground is an adventure and a joy to read."