There is a price for what may be considered progress. In his debut
collection, centered around the cracked industrial-pastoral of
Appalachia, Walsh asks who rung up the ecological tab and who will be
implicated by this line of questioning. Above the banks of polluted
rivers and decimated communities, a harvest of mountain and man; a
bounty of pine and cellular tower has been reaped. There are those
complicit in the sowing of such rewards, and through stunning syntax and
mapping the bucolic's role in the creation of present and future, Walsh
asks if the means can justify the ends. Who is accountable when noble
intentions irreparably wound the hidden corners of the Earth? Among
these poems is a life lived in the shadow of technological progress and
urban advantage. These poems plot the broken places, add topography to
the image reflected in the shattered screen of a smart phone, and unite
humanity in a shared culpability while also celebrating the perseverance
and persistent beauty of the natural world.