“Too much too soon disappears”: Despair, Hope, and Poetry in Southern Appalachia

A Guest Post by Joshua Martin

The lost can stay lost down here,
in laurel slicks, false-pathed caves.
Too much too soon disappears.

Thus begins Ron Rash’s hauntingly beautiful villanelle “In Dismal Gorge,” a poem that’s had a tremendous impact on me as a writer and lover of Southern Appalachia. Like most of Rash’s work, the poem is about the unrecoverable: the landscapes, cultures, and people consumed by the raging waters of time. Now, for me and millions of others, this water has become literal.

On creek banks clearings appear,
once homesteads. Nothing remains.
The lost can stay lost down here,

Before September 27th, most of the country had likely never heard of the small towns that hide in the hollers of Southern Appalachia, thriving, for centuries, on well-fed tradition. Hot Springs and Dillsboro, Elk Park and Erwin, Black Mountain and Burnsville. Then, the fourth deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since 1950 carved a path through the region like a knife through brisket, submerging fall’s first flame-red leaves under muddy water. As of this writing, Helene has claimed the lives of 227 people. But in the coming days and weeks and months, as the rescue teams traverse the washed-away roads and bridges to find yet another house swept miles down the French Broad and Nolichucky, that number will surely rise. 

like Tom Clark's child, our worst fears
confirmed as we searched in vain.
Too much too soon disappears.

I’ve lived in Southern Appalachia for a good portion of my life, and I feel more at home here than I do in most places. I love late autumn's cold-sweet breezes, the ones that first prick your nostrils, then your bones. I love the convenience stores where barbecue sandwiches steam in foil beside shelves of bait and tackle. I love the hiking boots and the lunches slathered in butter, the front yards dotted with broken chairs and stone angels and Halloween skeletons—even in June. And I love the people: that joyously weird mix of artists and outdoorsmen, the “just-sweet-tea-for-me” religious folk and those spiritually guided by stars and gemstones. These are people as diverse as an after-church buffet, yet consistently reduced to bite-sized morsels by a country that has historically forgotten them unless a banjo is involved.

How often this is made clear
where cliff-shadows pall our days.
The lost can stay lost down here,

When my wife and I lived in Asheville, the River Arts District was a special place. We loved spending afternoons drinking natural wines at Pleb Urban Winery and visiting the artists’ studios—especially the glassblowers. As a runner, I’ve logged countless miles huffing it on the path that once ran alongside the French Broad, admiring its deep golden-brown currents. Now, along with the running path, Pleb has been completely destroyed, and all that’s left of many of the studios is a wreckage of rubble, wood, and water-logged artwork. The district will rebuild, but like the first line of a poem that hits you in the middle of the night and then disappears, much of the art is never coming back. 

stones scattered like a river
in drought, now twice-buried graves.
Too much too soon disappears,

But Asheville, relatively speaking, is lucky. The city known as the “Paris of the South” has the cultural clout and resources to rebuild. What’s far less certain is the fate of small towns like Chimney Rock and Spruce Pine whose main streets have crumbled alongside the antique stores and mom-n-pop breakfast joints that once lined them. Then again, if anyone is strong enough to rebuild them, it’s the people of Appalachia.

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The past two weeks have been weighed down by heartbreak. Yet, they’ve also been buoyed by a sense of humanity you only see in the aftermath of destruction. With the countless businesses shuttered and never coming back, with the roads and mountain paths rebuilt only in dreams, with the hundreds of lives lost—compassion and humanity still exist. 

There’s the story of Cúrate, the James Beard-nominated Asheville restaurant, hosting the World Central Kitchen as they feed thousands each day. There’s the kayaker rescuing people stranded on rooftops in Swannanoa. There’s the furniture retailer giving away millions of dollars worth of sectionals, bed frames, and dressers to people whose houses have been claimed by the river. And this doesn’t even attempt to count the innumerable people who have donated their time, money, and energy to help recover the unrecoverable.

In the coming days and weeks and months and years, the region will rebuild. To do so, Southern Appalachia will need to continue to believe in the power of its people and its people as the power. It will need the hardscrabble, stiff-backboned resolve that has spread throughout the region for centuries like mountain laurel, like the tough wildflowers of its poetry. Indeed, it will need poetry. The kind that is written in lines, yes. But also the kind that is written in the land and the people. The kind that water, no matter how raging, can never wash away.

lives slip away like water.
We fill our Bibles with names.
The lost can stay lost down here.
Too much too soon disappears.

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Works Cited

Rash, Ron. “In Dismal Gorge.” Ron Rash Poems: New and Selected. Harper Collins, 2017.

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Joshua Martin is the author of Earth of Inedible Things (Jacar Press, 2021). His poetry and nonfiction have been published (or are forthcoming) in Los Angeles Review, The Pinch, storySouth, Rattle, The Bitter Southerner, Kitchen Work Magazine, Radar, The Baltimore Review, The Nashville Review, The Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere. His awards and honors include the 2024 Pinch Literary Award in Poetry, the 2024 MacGuffin Poetry Prize, and the 2023 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize from the North Carolina Writers' Network.