“When the Earth Was a Comfort” by Victor Depta

The Buddhist concept of emptiness appears frequently in Victor Depta’s latest collection of poetry, When the Earth Was a Comfort (Blair Mountain Press 2025). The collection is divided into four parts, corresponding to the seasons.

I related strongly to the title poem, which is placed first in the book. Depta references the floods, the heat, and “the burning in the wilderness” that are hallmarks of our changing climate. This poem also ties in migrants left “beyond a homeland anywhere” and “the extinction on the continents / of life after life—we know the cause / and we are despairing and suffer all regret / longing for the time that was / when the earth was a comfort to us.” This brief poem captured the sorrow I feel as I see the way mankind is destroying so much of the planet that is our home.

A number of poems consider the human need to name things: “to witness them is not enough— / we must give names to their existence.”  I loved the idea that “purple phacelia and larkspur” would bloom even though “they do not know their names.” The “wordless roses” “politely disdain the tawdry foolishness /  the name-tags staked by the stems.” They are glorious without labels. These poems paint pictures of nature’s beauty that we witness even though we are all “nameless  /  in the transience of eternity.” The oneness of everything permeates these poems.

Another concept that appears in numerous poems is the “anger, bitterness, despair” humans feel because “we were not spring resurrected;” we long for the immortality that “Wordsworth pined for.” A tender poem addresses the loss of a sister. Another, “August,” begins, “I have not accommodated myself to the fact / of my dying,” which is surely close to a universal feeling.

Some poems deal with themes from the poet’s home in southern West Virginia, such as coal mine explosions causing “that old grief again.”  Most, however, simply encompass our natural world as a setting. Depta’s poems name ironweed and ironwood. He paints a word canvas filled with goldenrod, hemlocks, rhododendrons, ferns, poison ivy, and tiny crystals of frost—and above all, “the light which is everywhere.”  In “The Sparrows and the Sun,” the poet asks “is it possible to be in love with a day / and if so, whatever may be a caress /  I want to be in love with what we call a thought / that the leaf-fall and eternity are companions.” How’s that for capturing the beauty of a moment?

When the Earth Was a Comfort is a thought-provoking and somehow comforting collection of poetry even though Depta addresses climate change, extinctions, and our own mortality. The comfort, perhaps, comes from that Buddhist concept of embracing the beauty of now. When the Earth Was a Comfort  is available from Amazon or from Blair Mountain Press, which offers it at a discount at $10.

Victor Depta

Victor Depta published four books of poetry (Ohio University Press, New Rivers Press, and Ion Books) before establishing Blair Mountain Press in 1999.  With the Press, he has published nine books of poetry, four novels, two collections of plays, a memoir, and two collections of essays, as well as works by other writers from Appalachia.