Ace Boggess
Eilen Jewell on Mountain Stage
Timid, at first;
by the end,
impassioned
not by our adoration,
but shared anger
at cultural woes.
Did she expect
to hear the Red-
State blues
from us, our hearts
merciless?
She gets over it,
voice a haunting
trill of riffs
to match her
lead guitarist
whose chops
carry us into &
away from sadness.
The host
calls her music
Americana;
we call it soulful,
soothing, strange--
a journey
at its own pace
less oblivious
than ours.
Timid, at first;
by the end,
impassioned
not by our adoration,
but shared anger
at cultural woes.
Did she expect
to hear the Red-
State blues
from us, our hearts
merciless?
She gets over it,
voice a haunting
trill of riffs
to match her
lead guitarist
whose chops
carry us into &
away from sadness.
The host
calls her music
Americana;
we call it soulful,
soothing, strange--
a journey
at its own pace
less oblivious
than ours.
Ace Boggess is author of five books of poetry, including Misadventure, Ultra Deep Field, and The Prisoners, plus two novels: States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing appears in Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Bellingham Review, Notre Dame Review, and other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.