Common Wealth

Marjorie Maddox is Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Lock Haven University. A resident of central Pennsylvania since 1990, she has published several award-winning poetry collections, including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (2004), When the Wood Clacks Out Your Name: Baseball Poems (2001), and Perpendicular as I (1994).Jerry Wemple is Associate Professor of English at Bloomsburg University. He is the author of You Can See It from Here (2000), which won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and The Civil War in Baltimore (2005). He grew up in the Susquehanna Valley.

• ContentsPREFACEXIIIPART I: GREETINGS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH!“Pennsylvania,” Gabriel Welsch“The Map,” Kathryn Hellerstein“Coming East from Cleveland to Philadelphia at Harvest,”Jeanne Murray Walker“Route 81,” David Chin“Me’n Bruce Springsteen Take My Baby Off to College,”Barbara CrookerPART II.: BEGINNINGS: PHILADELPHIA, “DUTCH” COUNTRY, AND THEIR ENVIRONS“Philly Things,” David Livewell“Colors,” Jeanne Murray Walker“Rowers on the Schuykill,” Leonard Kress“Listening for Bridge Builders,” David Livewell“Crazy Mary Rides the El,” Michele A. Belluomini“Spiritual Exercise, Kensington, Philadelphia,” Leonard Kress“If You Are Reading This,” Lynn Levin“Preliminary Sketches: Philadelphia,” Elizabeth Alexander“Our Lady of the Cabbages,” Deborah Burnham“10 PM at a Philadelphia Recreation Center,” Peter Krok“The Star Show,” Robin Becker“A Poem for a Black Boy,” Sonia Sanchez“Chester County Winter Day,” George Fleck“Spiritual Morning,” Robin Becker“A Hill in Pennsylvania,” Nathaniel Smith“In the Small World,” Sandra Kohler“Mennonites,” Julia Kasdorf“Mennonite Farm Wife,” Janet Kauffman“Female Ancestor,” Ann Hostetler“Buggy Ride at Sixteen,” Marjorie Maddox“Papaya: Lancaster County,” Juanita Brunk“Back with the Quakers,” Betsy Sholl“Before the Silver Chord Is Loosed,” Helen Mallon“In Carpenter’s Woods,” Gerald Stern“Halfway,” Maxine Kumin“Potter’s Field, Germantown,” Robin Hiteshew“Wallace Stevens House Prayer,” Heather Thomas“Shillington,” John Updike“Route 222: Reading to Kutztown,” Heather Thomas“The Idea of the Ordinary,” Carmine SarracinoPART III: CIRCLING EAST: MINES, MOUNTAINS, AND MILLS“Ode to Coal,” Sherry Fairchok“Coalscape,” Craig Czury“Coal Crackers,” James Hoch“Burning Mountain,” W.S. Merwin“Christ Comes to Centralia,” Barbara Crooker“Centralia (October 31, 1986),” Karen Blomain“This Is Not My Cousin,” Valerie Fox“What They Wanted Us to Bring Back,” Sherry Fairchok“Family Portrait, 1933,” Peter Oresick“Working the Face,” Jay Parini“Coal Train,” Jay Parini“The Miner’s Wife Leaves Home,” Karen Blomain“So the Coal Was Gone,” Thomas Kielty Blomain“Showing a Friend My Town,” Harry Humes“March 10, 1951,” Craig Czury“Bones & Ashes,” Helen Ruggieri“Photograph,” Anthony Petrosky“The Strippings,” Linda Tomol Pennisi“Cousin, Will You Take My Hand?” Jerry Wemple“Susquehanna: The Projects,” Ruth Ellen Kocher“The Field (an Excerpt),” Linda Tomol Pennisi“The Jeweler,” Peter Oresick“Real Faux Pearls,” Betsy Sholl“Polka Dancing to Eddie Blazonczyk and His Versatones in Coaldale, Pennsylvania,” Leonard Kress“A Different House,” Paul Martin“In Cursive,” Len Roberts“Spring Peepers, April, Wassergass,” Len Roberts“Easter Sunday, Seisholtzville,” Ann E. Michael“We Never Leave,” Jason Moser“Sprawl,” Ann E. Michael“Hawk Falls,” Dan Maguire“Climbing the Three Hills in Search of the Best Christmas Tree,” Len Roberts“Lehighton,” David Staudt“Gallivanting,” Paul Martin“Bombogenesis,” Karen Blomain“The Quarry,” Paul Martin“J.B. Phones Me at the End of Summer, Asking Where I Find Silence in the Lehigh Valley,” Steven Myers“The Poconos,” Robin Becker“Deer,” Harry HumesPART IV: HILLS AND RIDGES: THE SUSQUEHANNA VALLEY AND CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA“Naming Heraclitus,” Sandra Kohler“November Textures,” Karl Patten“Cousins,” Charles J. Rice“The Agnes Mark,” Gary Fincke“Renovo,” Sandra Kohler“Freight,” Julia Kasdorf“The Little League World Series: First Play,” Marjorie Maddox“Going Back,” Gregory Djanikan“Nocturne: Roller Mills Flea Market,” Nicole Cooley“Clearfield County Fair,” Ginny MacKenzie“The Bloomsburg Fair,” JoAnne Growney“Racetrack Downriver,” David Staudt“Fishing the Little J. Beneath the Methodist Church,” Harry Humes“The Company We Keep,” Ron Mohring“Worlds End,” Barbara Crooker“Winter Walks, Perry County,” Susan Weaver“It Isn’t Raining,” Cynthia Hogue“Pleasure Gap,” Bruce Bond“Aunt Lena Committed to Bellefonte State Hospital,” Ginny Mackenzie“Running through Danville State Hospital,” Michael Hardin“Laid Off in July,” Matthew Perakovich“Awl Street,” Jerry Wemple“Harrisburg Echoes (Excerpts),” Robert Small“Nights Like This,” Julia Kasdorf“Three Mile Island Siren,” Jack Veasey“Dream City,” Barbara DeCesare“Twelve Facts about the Immigrants: A Prose Poem,” Carmine Sarracino“Acoustic Shadows,” Bruce Bond“Gettysburg,” Samuel Hazo“The Battlefield Museum Guide Speaks,” Carmine SarracinoPART V: SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA: THE THREE RIVERS REGION AND THE LAUREL HIGHLANDS“Lines Written in a Pittsburgh Skyscraper,” Diane Ackerman“Bells,” Deirdre O’Connor“Listening to Jimmy Garrison (Pittsburgh, PA.),” Sonia Sanchez“The Dancing,” Gerald Stern“Integration (Kennywood Park, June 1963),” Daniel J. Wideman“My Father Likes Pittsburgh,” Jeffrey Oaks“Pittsburgh Poem,” Jan Beatty“Brick,” Kristin Kovacic“My Grandfather’s Cronies,” Deirdre O’Connor“Steelers! Steelers! Steelers!,” Ann Hayes“Class A, Salem, the Rookie League,” Gary Fincke“Slaving,” Daniel J. Wideman“Closed Mill,” Maggie Anderson“One of Many Bars in Ford City, Pennsylvania,” Peter Oresick“Spill,” Judith Vollmer“Listening to Birds after a Mild Winter,” Judith Vollmer“Audubon’s Nature Preserve, Fox Chapel,” Sharon F. McDermott“Desire,” Lynn Emanuel“Panther Hollow Bridge, Pittsburgh,” Jim Daniels“Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” Toi Derricotte“In Her Mind, She’s Already Quit,” Leslie Anne Mcilroy“Miracle Mile,” Ed Ochester“Buddy Picture,” Charles Clifton“Leaving Pittsburgh,” Kristin Kovacic“Gray,” Maggie Anderson“Imagining the Johnstown Flood,” Jerry Wemple“Flash Flood,” W.D. Snodgrass“Altoona,” E.A. Miller“Memorial Day, Elderton, Pennsylvania,” Ed Ochester“Home Town,” W.D. Snodgrass“Apollo Is a Pink Town,” JoAnne Growney“Pennsylvania September: The Witnesses,” Marjorie Maddox“Spring: Fayette County, PA,” Luise van Keuren“This Hill Will Get You There,” Patricia Jabbeh Wesley“Turning into a Pond,” Gerald SternPART VI: NORTH BY NORTHWEST: THE ALLEGHENIES AND ERIE“Second Coming in Northern Pennsylvania,” Steven Huff“When I Looked Next,” Michael Teig“After Tithonus and Aurora, Thoughts on a Life of Work,” David Swerdlow“Bullet Shell Heart,” Kirk Nesset“Jacklighting,” Antonio Vallone“White Tent in the Alleghenies,” David Staudt“Mountain Night,” Berwyn Moore“Swimming in Lake Erie: Intermediate Beginners,” Deborah Burnham“The Resurrection of Lake Erie,” Gerald Costanzo“Confession Off the Lake,” George Looney“Yet,” John Repp“Bus Stop at West 12th Street,” Sean Thomas Dougherty“In the Old Neighborhood It Begins in the Urgency of Whoever Is Nameless It Pulls the Night Hard in the Hands,” Sean Thomas Dougherty“Driving in Someone Else’s Light,” Mark S. Borczon“In a Diner in Franklin, Pennsylvania,” George Looney“Meditation in Oil City, PA,” Philip Terman“The Auctioneer,” Philip Terman“Tractor Pull,” Brad Comann“If We Were as Brilliant as Groundhogs,” Philip Terman“On Gobbler’s Knob,” Shirley S. Stevens“The History of Summer,” Sharon F. McDermottACKNOWLEDGMENTSTHE POETSINDEX

“What the book reveals about the state of poetry is the extent to which poetry can still be direct and informative. Read this book from start to finish and you’ll have a better feel for Pennsylvania than from reading a guidebook or a history. . . . The book has a great index that lets you look up places’ names, so you can see if there’s a poem about somewhere you know.”—Frank Wilson Philadelphia Inquirer