"We can say that Jeff Daniel Marion is a great Appalachian poet, but only in the sense that we can call Wordsworth a great poet of the Lake District or describe Dickinson and Frost as great New England poets. Like them, he writes about the specific landscape and people he loves and knows best, but also like them, he writes for all. This splendid compendium of appreciations and analyses is an essential companion to a body of work that speaks to readers both in and far beyond the southern highlands." -- Provided by publisher.
Fred Chappell, Jeff Daniel Marion, Jim Wayne Miller, and Robert Morgan are primarily folk artists who write poetry about people doing common, everyday tasks. Each poet in his own unique style illustrates a strong sense of place and community. All natives to the Appalachian region, these poets come from an agrarian community that they had to leave behind to enter the world of academia. Looking For Native Ground was published in 1989 comparing Chappell, Marion, Miller, and Morgan because of their place at the forefront of the regional literary movement in the 1980s.
"Circle, Turtle, Ashes is about a journey -- a journey we are all on, in our own different ways. Art Stewart brings the clarity of a scientist to poetry. The bones of life are laid bare for us to pick over, browsse, consider. This moving collection reminds us of our place in the natural world." -- P. [4] of cover.
The first collection of poems by this Irish-American author is inspired by her search for her ancestral background. "Gathering Stones" captures her haunting journey of self-discovery.
Tenth Anniversary Expanded Edition First released in 2011, Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine was the debut poetry collection from Tennessee poet Jesse Graves and was awarded the 2011 Weatherford Award in Poetry from Berea College, the Book of the Year in Poetry Award from the Appalachian Writers’ Association, and the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. The poems in Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine take part in many of the traditions of lyric poetry, including elegies for lost loved ones, odes to the beauty of family and the natural world, expressed through a range of poetic forms and techniques. The 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition includes twelve new poems and an introduction by Matthew Wimberley. from “Emissaries” Some mornings when I’m reading early, no light yet but the table lamp, my left hand will run through scales along the spine of the open book. My hands keep their own remembrance buried in fine grooves of flesh. The fingers turn over ignitions, faucets, always attuned to their proper force, knuckles never breaking things unless my brain overpowers them. They’ve discovered spectacular terrains, soft enclosures I can never enter again. I send them ahead as scouts for survey, emissaries that flip the lights in every dark hallway of the future.
The second collection of poems by award-winning poet KB Ballentine illustrates how light and shadow affect nature and people in the physical, psychological, and spiritual realms. The 70 poems follow the four seasons but just as the moon waxes and wanes there is shadow and light in every season. Fragments of light are never extinguished. Each day, we experience joy, worry, love, anxiety, peace, stress, surprise - all the ambiguous, intangible ideas that are as difficult to grasp as the shifting light.
