Winesburg, Ohio

June 21, 2012June 21, 2012

Winesburg, Ohio should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand small town American psyches. Forget TV and Hollywood movies.

I enjoyed the surreal aspect of this book, how the truths we adhere to turn us into grotesques.

The loosely conceived plot focuses mainly on the character of a young man named George Willard and his interactions with various small town characters.

Reading these stories, it makes sense that Sherwood Anderson influenced Hemingway and Faulkner. I was reminded also of Southern Gothic, which has me wondering if Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers read Winesburg, Ohio.

As for me, I responded right away to the stories by writing a poem.

Published by Christine

Christine Swint’s poems have appeared in Calyx, Birmingham Poetry Review, Slant, a Journal of Poetry, Tampa Review, Heron Tree, Ekphrasis, and others. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and she has won first place prizes from the Georgia Poetry Society and Agnes Scott College. Her first collection, Swimming This, was published in 2015 by FutureCycle Press. She teaches first-year composition at a metro-Atlanta university and writes about poetry, art, hiking, and yoga at Balanced on the Edge, https://balancedonedge.blog Twitter @christine_swint View all posts by Christine