In RAISING THE DEAD, Ron Rash not only raises the bar for himself but also for anyone else that chooses to write Appalachain-based verse. As in AMONG THE BELIEVERS, this poet demonstrates an uncanny ability to create rhythmic short lines (seven syllables).

Rash closes a poem as well as anyone writing today. As a result, the ghosts in these poems, of the Jocassee Valley and its aqua-burial and of the revisited ancestors and historical figures will haunt the reader beyond the pages of the book.

Finally, what sets Rash apart from many of his contemporaries is his ability to recognize and to develop valid poetic topics. There is nothing superficial, superfluous, or forced in the pages of this volume. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Raising the Dead, Ron Rash

This book, both inside and out, is a work of art, equal to and even surpassing the others Iris has done. I opened it as soon as it arrived, knowing Ron Rash and Iris and knowing that this would be a once-in-a lifetime experience, and it was--and is.
To begin with, the book is physically beautiful, the cover design an invitation, even an enticement into the poems themselves. After reading the poems, one is drawn back to the cover, realizing the profound implications of the photo. Even the colors chosen complement the content of the book.
Ron's poems are so provocative and so keenly crafted that one reading is never enough. The images are so strong that they take the reader by the throat and heart right through the experience and emotion of the poem, and then the image echoes like a song repeating and repeating itself both awake and in dreams. I will never get over "Under Jocassee" and "Whippoorwill" and "Speckled Trout" and "Brightleaf" and "At Reid Hartley's Junkyard" and ....
Ron's poems are so moving that one can read only one or two poems at a time. Almost every piece is so rich with implication and surprise that it's like reading a powerful short story, like having lightning strike right in your own backyard.
I will be using many of the poems in Raising the Dead not only in poetry workshops as examples of the BEST in contemporary poetry but also in my bereavement counseling and medical ethics group sessions.
Wow! What a treasure!
In short, this book not only enriches but deeply affects--changes--the reader's life. What more could a poet or a publisher or a reader desire?

Raising the Dead is a book I could not put down. During my second reading I began a list of favorite poems. However, I soon abandoned the idea because the list took on the appearance of the table of contents.
The underlying theme of the work is loss. Overlaid on that theme Ron Rash has wrapped astounding imagery in Appalachian family stories and folk tales to create a masterful protest of the Jocassee Reservoir.
Book arrangement is superb. Poems provide a series of knockout punches with very little breathing room between them.
Despite his daily academic environment, Rash has avoided the temptation to bury his stories and images in literary language. His ability to produce profound poetry in everyday words is reminiscent of Billy Collins.
This outstanding book must be included in the library of any poet or lover of poetry.

Rash's work really deserves a larger audience. He has a command of language and image sadly lacking in too many contemporary poets, and he has a compassion for his subject matter that is even rarer.

Rash's work is neither too personal nor esoteric. He is concerned with recording, in verse, the lives of men and women who would otherwise be forgotten. His subject matter is COMMUNITY, as one would expect from a Southerner. In this case he writes of the Carolina millworkers in the early part of the twenthieth century who literally turned their lives off to the cotton mill bosses and submitted themselves to lives of heat, early hours, drunken sprees, boredom, and lint-inflicted disease and death.

In many ways EUREKA MILL is a novel in verse. Rash certainly has a novelist's eye for detail, nuance, characterization, and place. And there are also great affinities to the Twelve Southerner's I'LL TAKE MY STAND. EUREKA MILL provides a kind of verse correlative for the essays in that classic work. Mass industrialism has forced people off the land and out of the lives they have known for generations and has left them with...what? Alienation, bitterness, and early death.

A powerful volume, worthy of a wider readership.

Ron Rash has invoked the memories of my childhood, the town I left so long ago, and the memories of friends and their families. I was immediately transported to the envrirons of Chester, SC and put in touch with the people I knew growing up.

If you grew up in any one of the small southern mill villages, this book will be your transportation to the past. If you were not so fortunate, this book will paint you an accurate portrait of the times and people.

For the uninitiated, "Eureka" is pronounced you-RICK-er (accent on the middle syllable)or, at least that's how my Daddy (Southerners of my generatuion always call their male parent Daddy)always pronounced it,

Congratulations Ron, you have a winner!

This chilling collection of poems takes us back to a wonderful place. A childhood of mill houses, cotton fields,and cotton mills. A place where a man would burn his lungs and lose his soul. These tragic poems by my boyhood friend Ron Rash allow me to see where I came from and how far I have to go.I encourage everyone with a soul to buy this book..

Somebody needs to get the word out about this book. Rash, who is also a fine poet, now establishes himself as one of the best new southern fiction writers. Rising to the top in this crowded field is not such an easy task, but this collection of heartfelt, challenging and sometimes disturbing stories should be the drawstring that brings his star up from the well.

Imaginative and yet often grimly realistic, stories like "Dangerous Love" where a young woman falls in love with a carnival knife thrower and "Overtime" where David Thompson makes a tragic appearance as "Cedric" are sure to move the reader.

The fact that Rash has in his life straddled the line between his blue collar roots and his academic destiny is clear in this work. While some of the writing might remind one of Larry Brown, the physical violence of Brown's work is substituted for here by a more subtle violence of the heart. I highly recommend this collection and look forward to whatever might be next.

Ron Rash has written a beautifully told story about desire, heartbreak, cunning, murder and justice. He's done it in simple language and in a riviting style. Broken into 5 sections, each character tells the story from their own perspective. Ron lays out each section in such as a way that the story never becomes repetitive and the book is riviting. The Apalachian language with colloquialisms is delightful, making me want to read lines over again for their color and style, as well as content.

I hope Ron Rash is currently working on a second novel because I will be looking for it every day until I can purchase it!
I gladly give this book a 5 star rating.

Ron Rash is one of North Carolina's finest poets. Set in the Jocassee Valley in the southern Appalachians, One Foot in Eden is a taut, compelling story of infidelity and revenge killing that has the feel of archetypal mountain legend, a sort of "Lord Randall" updated by a psychological realist. A nifty and quite cunning murder mystery plot is parceled out to readers, Roshomon-style, from the cross-angled, and occasionally contradictory, first-person testimonies of the major players: the high sheriff, who knows murder has been done and who has done it, but can't find a body; the murderer himself; the adulterous wife for whom he kills; the bastard son of the illicit union; the deputy, a sort of Everyman, who serves as the reader's proxy and comes on, like Horatio in Act V, to wonder over the principals' unraveled fates. (There's also a witch!) For me, in some ways, the most compelling character is the Appalachian landscape, which Rash delivers tersely, with a poet's exacting eye and speech. Ultimately, One Foot in Eden is a parable about the pursuit of justice-its elusiveness at the human level, its certainty from the divine. True statement: I read the book-which is only 200 pages-- in a single sitting and couldn't (didn't) put it down.

I had read Ron Rash's three books of poetry and found his work extraordinary before I learned that he had also ventured into fiction. Then I became aware of Mr. Rash's two short story collections. I read them and found that this man, whom I had thought to be pure poet, was capable of a lyrical, poetic prose that I found engaging. It had the "feel" of endurance about it. But when I read Mr. Rash's first novel, gulping it down almost in one sitting, I was absolutely convinced that a major talent had come among us. Ron Rash can easily take his place alongside any number of the older, more established, and, alas, even major, novelists of the American South. I await Rash's second novel with bated breath. But I hope he will not forsake poetry. We readers need him in both genres--poetry as well as fiction.

I am familiar with the area known as Cliffside; and in Ron Rash's book, I found it easy to relate to the instances and the people that are described. The stories are humorous, and the book is a good one to pick up after a long day at the mill.

This is a book I give as a gift over and over because it is so well written and very entertaining as well. I highly reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about characters who are so real, they jump off the page.

I am a part-time media specialist at Pendleton Library and thoroughly enjoyed this book. I have three small children and they were always asking me"what does it say, mama"?

Rash's love of family and simpler times are vividly evident in his writings. His narrative and evocative language mentally sketch the reader into the center of each setting. It is easy to envision the events, thoughts, and feelings that inspired Rash to capture that partiular moment and preserve it in his words. This book is a "must read" for poet lovers and non poet lovers alike.

If you love poetry and don't have this one, then you're missing the best collection to come out in years. This book should have won the Pulitzer for poetry. Enough said. It's stunning, beautiful, wonderful. And Ron Rash didn't even pay me to say that.

...in Rash's talent, that is. AMONG THE BELIEVERS is a modestly scaled collection of poems that packs a wallop. The power comes from the seeming effortlessness of Rash's rhythms and images in poems set among the "everyday" folk of the Carolina Appalachians who, in their struggles with life, love, redemption, and death, turn out to be something more than ordinary. Here the poet is storyteller, bard, confessor, recorder, and lover of these people. His reverence for them shows in his refusal ever to condescend and with the fresh-eyed wonder and beauty with which he renders the world they live in.

The late Anthony Hecht provides a kind and insightful foreward to the poem and never hyperbolizes the merits of Rash's writing. This collection may very well establish itself as a classic.