Poetry + a Cross-Country Road Trip

I will be posting a lot about this in the next couple months, but in September, I am going on a cross-country road trip from Baltimore, Maryland to Santa Cruz, California. I am going with my partner, who is a writer, so expect a lot of literary-nerd things to happen. One poem for each state that we drive through.

There is something powerful about reading pieces from poets who are either from the land that I am driving over, or have driven over the same land. I enjoy hearing others' views of the beauty, the squalor, the community, and the culture of other places, especially those that I have not visited previously.

Here are the states that I will be passing through and the poems that I have chosen to read as we drive through them:

Maryland - "Baltimore on Upper Eutaw" by Sidi J. Mahtrow
Pennsylvania - "Returning Native" by John Updike
West Virginia - "How to Get to Green Springs" by Dave Smith
Ohio - "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" by James Wright
Indiana - "How Evolution Came to Indiana" by Philip Appleman
Illinois - "Roots" by John Pillar
Missouri - "Reflection on History in Missouri" by Constance Urdang
Kansas - "Kansas August Evening" by Jamie Lynn Heller
Colorado - "The Garden" by Susie Kerin
Wyoming - "Western Civilization" by James Galvin
Utah - "Provo" by Mark Rudman
Nevada - "Sparks, Nevada" by Cynthia Cruz
California - "The Dogs at Live Oak Beach, Santa Cruz" by Alicia Ostriker

If you have other recommendations, I would absolutely love to hear them, so please leave them in the comments.