Ed Ochester's Unreconstructed

The thing that strikes me about Ed Ochester’s Unreconstructed is the range in his poems in regard to both content and form. He is one of a few poets I am familiar with who can deliver the same punch in a five-line poem as he can in a three-page poem. His longer narratives have this momentum that never leaves the reader bored or confused. I taught a class at OASIS this summer, and Ochester was on my syllabus. I put him there because he is easy to understand and is familiar to everybody. His language has a way of getting inside the moment, a moment that everyone has experienced in some way.

Many of Ochester’s poems have this seamless movement from one thought to the next. In “September, Listening to the Old Songs,” he goes from music, to nature, to being alone, to a memory of a friend, back to nature, then ends with an emotion:

“I hope you find nothing,” which was

perfect, and here under the stars

once again I realize it is perfect

as, after most sadness,

it always is. (29)

The use of “nothing” and “sadness,” paired with nature, create a loneliness that is actually wanted, one that is appealing and serene to the reader as if this sadness is more therapeutic than the sadness they experience on their own.

Ochester is capturing a universal experience in his poems. He is doing with rural landscape what Frank O’Hara did with urban landscape: he is taking the reader into small moments of intimacy between friends. He succeeds in doing this by putting the reader on a first-name basis with the characters. He lets the characters speak in his poems, and uses minimal space and language to create an atmosphere.

“Ed Shreckongost” is a prime example of this. The setting is intimate (the roof of the speaker’s house), and the landscape is established with “Deciduous mountains, old men/sleeping, lie down all the way to Saltsburg,/here & there the unhealed scars of stripmines.” Every word in this section lends description to the environment from which these men are inside: The lackadaisical, maybe even defeated, population of a small rural town; the deciduous mountains that are very specific to the eastern side of the country; and the stripmines, which are specific to Western Pennsylvania. In a 25-line poem, he uses only 3 lines to create a landscape that is relatable to every reader.

Another strength to this poem is the voice of Ed Shreckongost. His direct voice is used in 12 of the 25 lines – nearly half – and is the meat of the poem. This is an instance where a direct quote does so much more than mere story telling. There would be a disconnect between the reader and the subject of the poem if it were not for the presence of Ed’s voice. The lines: “’. . . Verne,/I’m a coonhunter,/presently/unemployed,’” works on many levels. The one-word lines slow the poem down, forcing the reader to recognize the breathiness in the speaker. They also capture the personality of the speaker by showing his lifestyle and priorities through the quote.

These are just a few examples of what I love about this book. I could go on for hours writing about Ochester’s use of language and knack for storytelling. His poems read like journals, revealing stories that capture the American Experience and are universal in their meanings and familiarity. His accessible language and common stories make writing look simple, until you sit down to write.