Steel Valley Elegy

Paperback,‏‎ 146 pages
ISBN-13: ‎978-1639801039

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William Heath was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and grew up in the nearby town of Poland.  He has a PhD in American Studies from Case Western Reserve University.  During his first teaching job at Kenyon, under the influence of visiting writers Toby Olson and Paul Blackburn, he began writing poems.  Later at Transylvania and Vassar he taught American literature and the art of poetry.  The best of his early work, gathered in The Walking Man, was praised by James Wright: “William Heath is one of the most brilliantly accomplished and gifted young poets to appear in the United States in quite some time.  I am especially moved by the delicacy and precision of the language, which indicates as distinguished intelligence, and by the purity and depth of feeling in all of his poems.”  Richard Wilbur described The Walking Man as “a work of a poet how knows how to tell a story.”

As a Fulbright at the University of Seville then as a professor at Mount Saint Mary’s University, he wrote three novels, an award-winning work of history, and essays on American classics such as Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain.   Upon his retirement the William Heath Award was established to honor annually the best student writer.  A few years ago he returned to his first love and has since published over a hundred poems; of those gathered in a chapbook, Night Moves in Ohio, Kit Hathaway noted that they “are by turns poignant, funny and starkly realistic… teeming with fascinating storyline detail and imagery,” while Eamon Grennan added, “These poems are savvy and lively, as exact as a high jumper’s focus, quick and accurate as a tennis player’s eye, wrist, ankle.  Night Moves in Ohio is Heath’s own remembrance of things past—an autobiography in rapt miniature of his unforgotten early life, mercilessly but compassionately lit by the laser-light of memory.”

Steel Valley Elegy includes poems from Night Moves in Ohio as well as many more: some depict the civil rights movement in the Deep South and civil disturbances in northern cities.  Others present Heath’s wry and ironic look at life in these United States, and a final sequence evokes the world of nature while raising philosophical questions.  Heath maintains that poetry is written in musical lines about things that matter.  His love of language, wide range of interests, and uncanny eye for telling details are always on display.  A meditative yet humorous sensibility, an unflinching appetite for reality, memorable eloquence—Steel Valley Elegy displays the distinctive skills of an accomplished poet.

The poems in Steel Valley Elegy are often hard-boiled; they eschew poetic diction to create a unique vocabulary composed of “radiator caps” and “loading docks,” “steel fittings form construction sites/sold to Union Iron and melted down.”  Heath builds his poems on closely observed details.  The movement from one line of poetry to the next transforms a set of visual items into a meditation.  He is a portrait painter who approaches his subjects from the vantage of both a professor of deep learning and a man of many travels.  Heath is not afraid to put his own stamp on big topics.  He conveys the unimaginable horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima through small details.  Or coaxes from intimate scenes of family life a meaningful human vision.  Heath employs the tools of wit, narrative, and wide learning to present his trenchant observations.  Steel Valley Elegy is a collection based on the experience of a mature poet.

— David Salner, in Free State (Spring 2022)

I speak Steel Valley American. Once mills
lined the Mahoning River from Youngstown
Sheet and Tube’s Jeannette Blast Furnace
on Brier Hill to Republic Steel in Struthers.
Coal intensified to coke turned iron ore
into molten ingots that were rolled into slabs,
scarfed free of impurities, shaped for strength:
bridges to span waters, girders for skyscrapers,
tanks, ships, guns, and shells to win World War II,
machines and factories for our bounty.

The workers—Honkies from Smokey Hollow,
Slovaks from Nebo, Dagos, Polacks, Blacks—
dress for combat: hard hats, safety glasses,
asbestos coats, steel-toed boots. Beware
of breathing tainted air. Open hearth blast
furnaces singe eyebrows, sear lungs, “pants
on fire” no metaphor. At the last whistle
dehydrated men head for the taverns
on tap at each plant gate, down boilermakers
(a shot of whiskey dropped in a mug of beer),
cash checks, play the “bug,” stagger home.

Men make serious money making steel.
A house with a lawn, a Ford or Chevy
in the drive. Soot on windows means food
on the table. Mills create the weather:
skies dark in daytime, bright at night; clothes
hang in the cellar to avoid black rain.
The city is called “Little Chicago,” eighty-
five bombings—“Youngstown tune-ups”—
as Cleveland and Pittsburgh mobsters blow
each other apart for control of the bug
and other games of chance. Barbers charge
five bucks for a haircut, ten to start your car.

Crossing the bridge into town I see
the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby:
grey heaps of slag, bins of scrap metal,
the fuming rusty-orange sulfurous river
that might ignite at the flip of a match;
low, corrugated buildings topped by tall
towers and vent stacks burn off waste gas;
serpentine trains shunted into sideyards,
scotched into freight cars, unloaded one by one.

My Czech girlfriend, whose father works in steel,
spreads a blanket in her backyard above the valley.
As evening falls the infernal glow of the mills
becomes magical. Yellow flames from smelters
make air-borne soot sparkle, blotting out the stars.
White-hot slabs glide down conveyor belts.
The screeching, clanging industrial din
has a percussive rhythm. Teens in love,
for all we know our kisses last hours.
Now the mills are gone. The only people left,
misplaced their car keys—still I celebrate
the steel valley’s brutal lost beauty.

Me, I practiced down in our pitch-black
cement cellar, dribbling with either hand
in the dark. Sometimes I sat with my eyes shut,
spinning the ball on my fingers, rubbing
the nubbles and whispering to myself.

This was near the end of the Ohio phase
of the Korean War when coming home
at dusk from the Battle of Hidden Valley
and Lee Run Creek I ran head-first
into a barbed wire fence slicing my skin
at the hairline. My mother screamed to see
the web of blood while I searched my skull
in the mirror praying for a scar.

At first I shot from the hip, pushing off
on my left leg to launch a giant step up
with my right, banking the ball off the board
to drop through the hoop. By junior high
I had a fallaway jump shot and basketballs
on the brain.

I am seventeen, visiting
my cousin in Shaker Heights, posh
suburb of Cleveland where bad things
rarely happen. On Scottsdale Boulevard
a yellow sash across a driveway, boys
being boys we want to know what
the fuss is about. Between the garage
and the house a pool of blood, chalk
outlines of a body, a gun, a knife.
A woman comes with a garden hose,
washes the blood down a drain.

I am from Poland, suburb of mobbed-up
Youngstown, juicy bone of contention
between Cleveland and Pittsburgh for control
of vending machines, juke boxes, the bug,
gambling, prostitution, hard drugs.
Bombings are commonplace, murders
no rarity. This, my first crime scene.
Mike Sperazzo was shot from ambush.
He’d done time for armed robbery, fencing
stolen property; he was a bookie,
played the horses, bankrolled floating
crap games. Maybe the hit was to settle
a score, or a mob boss gave the word.

What haunts me is that his wife
heard the car pull in, out the window
saw a man by the hedge fire twice,
slip away, return. The killer stepped
on Mike’s chest for the coup de grâce.
Did she rush out of the house to see
if he was dead, then call the police?
When we arrive, cop cars and reporters
are gone. She is alone in the house,
a Mafia wife who hoses her husband’s
blood, pooled beside the chalk outline
of his body, down the driveway drain.

As a boy he climbed up
a utility pole to retrieve
a bird’s nest. He heard
the hot lines singing,
then his face brushed
high tension and the shock
melted it. The one eye
that survived slid down
a pink cheek. The full nose
drained to small red holes.
His mouth was a black
breathing scar. Too sensitive
to ever see the sun again,
at night the Green Man
walks the back roads
of western Pennsylvania
between New Galilee
and Kopple until the word
spreads. One summer night
we pack six in a car
to catch a glimpse of that
incredible face in the glare
of our headlights. The sight
is electrifying. On cue,
the girls scream in terror,
we kiss away their fear.
The cops, true to custom,
are quick to pounce
on the anticipated U-turn.
They flash us down, beams
stab at startled faces.
We follow them to a house,
wait for the sun to rise
so the Justice of the Peace
can impose a handsome fine
to support the town. Warned
and released we race back
to Poland, Ohio, talking much
louder than usual, trying
to laugh away that face.

For three summers I sell
bait, boats, fishing permits
at Evans Lake to those
lunatics who show up
before dawn to hook their fill
of perch, bass, and bluegills.
An old Black man likes to gig
for carp along the shore line,
most men want to be out
on the water—fine with me,
I am free to read a good book
by lunch when the fishermen
dock, drive off with their catch.

One morning, I am late
as usual, cars are lined up,
men stand hands on hips
scowling as I unlock
the gate—but the back door
is open, so is the safe:
Someone, during the night,
has robbed the boathouse.
The detective, decked out
in a TV trench coat, asks
a few questions, paces back
and forth, catches my eye.
“Looks like an inside job.”
A lie detector would tell.

Headquarters, in Youngstown,
where the usual suspects
are wiseguys implicated
in gangland bombings. I sit
in a third floor room below
a bare bulb—a strap
across my chest, fingers
attached, the questioning
begins. Yes or no my options,
I affirm my name, address,
deny I robbed the safe
or know about the theft.
At the end, a dim smile
for my inquisitor, I ask
how I’d done. “Not very good,
Bill.” And he shows me
the zig-zagging printout
proclaiming my guilt.

“Either you did this or you
know who did” I am told.
“We have your address.
You’ll be hearing from us.”
For weeks I rarely slept.
The crime remains unsolved.
All these years I ponder
why my doorbell never rang.
The city cops are swamped,
or snug in the mob’s pocket,
no bombers stand trial.

Why did I fail the test?
When Keats saw a sparrow
pecking the gravel he became
that bird, felt its satisfaction.
A crowbar for the door,
sensitive fingers cracked
the safe, loot crammed in a bag,
I made a clean getaway.
In my defense I plead poetry.

A sharp-featured skinny
angel with a frizzy
halo of reddish-brown
curly hair tousled like
a fright-wig, brambled
in tangles and knotted
by the wind—wearing a
snap-brimmed corduroy
Huck Finn cap, blue jeans,
brown jacket, his head bent
to the lost ghost wail
of his sad harmonica
an acoustic guitar strapped
over his shoulder, scraps
of songs crumpled up
in his pockets—a scruffy
runt defiantly slinging
street words into poem/songs
putdowns and prophecies—
exalted on high-heeled
hand-tooled battered
desert boots, this sunken-
eyed seer back from
a badlands death trip
looks into the dark
like a night hawk
with grim wit he whines
his rhymed visions—
the poetry of apocalypse.

We keep the windows up
and the air conditioner on
smoke joint after joint,
hours become days, time
slips out of sync as we
make our merry way across
the Great Plains. We’ve read
On the Road, our destination
California. Tom thumps
and strums a broken-
stringed guitar, wails tunes
about how United Fruit abuses
banana pickers. Folk songs,
you see, make a statement,
we gather in the name
of something. We roll
our own, do it in the road,
believe that if everyone
will light just one little
draft card what a peaceful
world this will be.

The times
are a-changing, ours is
a ragtag army of activists.
Our revolution not waged
by proletariat in factories
or peasants out in the fields,
but students in dormitories.
Politics isn’t what you
argue for but what you do.
The best way to stop a war
is not to fight in it.
Gutsy is good, if your body
isn’t on the line you have
no moral stance. We
oppose the Vietnam war
to avoid dying there, when
four students at Kent State
are killed, protests stop
because we fear dying here.
What can you expect of troops
commanded by Sgt. Pepper.

That evening I go to see Guru Maharaj Ji,
Perfect Master and Lord of the Universe.
Women in white with white cloths devoutly
dust his sacred throne inside a towering
Plexiglas helmet seemingly designed for
gigantic astronauts to walk on the moon.
The at-one-with-the-all-be-here-now crowd
in their flower-decaled Beetle vans
trailing clouds of marijuana smoke
have been arriving all day. Now in full
tie-dyed hippie regalia they pack
a large field. A rock band stokes the scene
with ecstatic renditions of “Soul Vaccination
(Got my Soul Vaccination)” and “Gonna See
My Guru Tonight.” Some hours later
a silver limo delivers the guru,
a Krishna-costumed chubby teenager,
and his svelte twenty-something consort—
the brains behind the operation, she
enthuses about the miraculous powers
of Maharaj Ji to bring the world peace.
When his turn comes, “There are no words
to say,” he says. “Everything is beautiful,”
and his devotees—arms on high, faces
aglow to the star-scattered sky—
absorb his message as blesséd manna.

If you’re bored by Reno’s casinos,
those ersatz palaces of glitz,
and hunger for sturdy food
Louis’ Basque Corner is the place.
The old railway towns of Nevada
had small hotels by their stations
where Basque sheepherders
from Spain and France found
the basic comforts of home.

After summering in the mountains
and deserts with their flocks,
in the winter they sought bed
and board at a Basque hotel.
Hearty fare, family style
on long communal wooden tables
covered by well-worn oilskin,
Louis’ restaurant remains faithful
to this culinary ritual.

Start with a Picon Punch:
in an ice-packed glass pour
Amer Picon, a bittersweet orange-
flavored liquor from Marseilles,
add a dash of grenadine, a splash
of soda, a flourish of brandy,
a rim-twist of lemon. Alumni
of this potent aperitif caution:
one, two, three, floor.

Sharing a meal turns strangers into
accomplices, everybody elbow-to-elbow
as waiters arrive with “the set-up,”
vegetable soup, a house salad
featuring heirloom tomatoes,
bowls of slow-cooked white beans,
pungent bread, crisp fries fluffy on
the inside, sprinkled with garlic bits,
heaping platters of roast chicken.

Topping the fulsome prelude
a selection of savory entrées:
mountain oysters in season,
sweetbreads in two styles—sautéed
in garlic and onions or soaked
in a red-wine mushroom sauce—
beef tongue or oxtail stew,
juicy lamb chops or lamb shank,
prime rib, steak to your taste.

This Basque bacchanal is abetted by
carafes of cabernet, tall mugs of beer,
plates are passed, toasts proffered,
good talk flows and feelings glow.
Don’t forget dessert: ice cream,
a tangy variety of cheeses,
fresh fruit, and strong coffee.
Give thanks for this ample feast—
and for stopping at two Picons.

Oh Baltimore / Man, it’s hard just to live.
—Randy Newman

West Baltimore is not one of Dante’s
descending circles of Hell,
just block after block of red-brick
flat-roofed rowhouses with puny
adjacent porches gaping at streets
that weave a rectangular maze
from which few escape.

Every morning fiends gather
at the corner where touts
chant brand names—Killer Bee,
Lethal Weapon, The Terminator—
for a sample taste of the day
and then spread the word
this shit is the bomb, a blast
that will last, bring back that first
soul-shattering high they crave
to ravish themselves again.

It’s a strictly cash-and-carry
business for the coke-crazed
pulling capers to make the nut.
Copper piping, aluminum siding,
steel fittings from construction sites
sold to Union Iron and melted down.
Or ransacking apartments, lugging off
the loot in black Hefty bags. Whatever
you boost, part of the game.

Each corner an open-air bazaar
for crews with the best package
money can buy (if they can hold
their ground), an oasis drawing
predator and prey—vacant-eyed
fiends wander in like wildebeests
to slack their thirst, jackals, big cats,
vultures primed to feed on
the weak and unwary—while
snatch artists eye touts slinging vials
for a chance to steal their stash.

Stickup boys, lone wolves
with long guns, shakedown
well-heeled dealers or rip
plywood from derelict buildings
in a testosterone rush to raid
shooting galleries, squalid dens
where the far-gone sprawl on floors
littered with pipes or spikes,
a few blackened bottle caps,
some matches, a jar of water,
each seeking the holy grail
in a glassine bag or plastic vial.

Like a barrel of blue crabs
anyone trying to climb out is
dragged back down. If you get
jacked by cops for conspiracy
with intent to distribute, a stint
at Hagerstown, a chance to give
tired veins a rest. Wine is fine,
so is dope, yet nothing is finer
than a toke of that ready rock.
The message: don’t mess with desire.
Once you do your own jail time
the corner will still be there.

The moose has no predators.
In its mature strength fearing
neither man nor beast it strides
brazenly down a small town’s
main street or halts traffic on
the highway. Even wolves are
wary of its rack of wide-
spread antlers. In Yellowstone
I walk into the woods
beyond a beware of bears sign,
in a sunlit clearing I pause
before a strange sight: Centered
in a circular carpet of dark fur
a gleaming white, perfectly
articulated skeleton of a moose.
As silent and serene as a shrine,
the site still conjures an unsettling
vision of violence, the dead metaphor
“the fur flew” comes to life—picture
the feeding frenzy that could cause
those tufts to float in the air,
fall to earth symmetrically.
Yet within that dark ominous circle
the white ribcage of the moose,
weakened by old age, outlines
the arched framework of a chapel,
a sanctuary to life and death.

One day she asks her children
home from college for favorite
memories of growing up.
Their response isn’t much,
a shared milkshake here,
flat tire there, a trip to Disneyland.
That is my life, she thinks,
everything I do or care about
dishwater down the drain.
She doesn’t want to be a housewife
anymore, scrubbing and cleaning,
so she becomes an archeologist
who spends long hours
grubbing in the dark earth,
shaking dirt through a mesh,
sifting dust from dust in quest
of the detritus of the past,
a toothbrush behind her ear
for cleaning up potsherds.
At Meadowcroft on Cross Creek
in western Pennsylvania
under the overhanging arch
of a sandstone cliff, six feet
below surface ground strewn
with beer cans, junkies’ needles,
she finds firepit fragments
dating back 16,000 years.

A lone fisherman pauses
in his rowing, tilts his head
at ominous fog blowing in
on the dark horizon. Just now
he’s heard the mother ship’s horn
warning of his danger. The pensive
profile—chin up, calculating how far
he must row for a safe return versus
the approach of an incoming fog
thick enough to leave him blindly lost—
suggests he’s confronted this fate
before. What are the odds?
His fists, at canvas center,
firmly grip the oars.

No matter how sturdy the wood
his dory is made of, it is tossed
like a shell, turbulent waves,
cresting whitecaps, lift the prow
skyward with each mighty surge,
plunge back down again as if
to dispatch the boat to the deep.
Two large white halibut in the stern
prove a successful catch, all for naught
should he fail at the heroic task
of rowing to his ship, a small,
ghostly apparition in the distance.
Whether or not he survives
Homer’s painting does not show.

Everything longs to mingle,
car keys and loose change
play hanky-panky in pockets,
books slide off shelves,
kitchenware and glasses
seemingly secure in cabinet
clatter down and shatter,
pots crack, cookies crumble.
Watch droplets on a leaf
gather, ease together, fall,
or ashes at a cigarette’s tip,
the other shoe hits the floor.
Life skews, bends out of shape,
a cant, a slant, awry, akimbo,
out of kilter. There is a sag, slump,
things lurch, topple, collapse,
warp and woof lose alignment,
Humpty Dumpty’s off the wall,
lakes desiccate, trees debauch,
tunes jangle, clang discordant.
Even a substance as obdurate
as iron rusts, flakes off in petals.
I’m too tired to finish the list,
it’s all dregs down the drain—
each puddle seeks a creek,
wants to slide to the sea.

Drifting down the river
the stream moves so slowly
I can see each flower
if I’m looking closely.

Instead I waste my time,
half asleep, half awake,
noting only the slime
curdled along the bank.

When the water widens
into a placid lake
it seems all movement
stops, but that’s a mistake.

Remorselessly the stream
rolls on, from slow to fast,
as next white-water rapids
sweep me perilously past

treacherous rocks. Steep falls
drop abruptly to deep
turbulent pools that swirl
until I cannot keep

my balance. And so it
goes, as hours, days, years pass.
I now know with regret
that not one life will last.