Links to a few of my poems:
- Boyhood Trapped Between Water and Blood (Terrain.org)
- Barn Gothic (Shenandoah)
- The Furnace, the Bloom, the Stars (with Adam Vines, (Kenyon Review)
- Trumpet Creeper (North American Review, in Night Field Anecdote)
- Nightmare, Revised (Rattle, forthcoming in Tree Heresies)
Please click on book covers to link to purchasing information.
FULL-LENGTH BOOKS
Tree Heresies (Mercer University Press, 2015)
William Wright's eighth collection of poems is an expansive personal journey that includes poems about subjects as varied as yellow jackets, insomnia, a mountain witch, salt marshes, a ditch filled with rainwater, and even a post-apocalyptic portrait of the last person on Earth. Beginning with "Prologue," a piece that embeds a kaleidoscopic, novel-like vision of a small agricultural town and a few of its inhabitants, these poems capture the exterior world and recontextualize its many forms through a dreamlike logic, harnessing radiant imagery and strong aural texture through lines and words that stir both mind and heart. Here, Wright reveals how the most luminous forms often dwell in even the darkest subjects and images.
William Wright's eighth collection of poems is an expansive personal journey that includes poems about subjects as varied as yellow jackets, insomnia, a mountain witch, salt marshes, a ditch filled with rainwater, and even a post-apocalyptic portrait of the last person on Earth. Beginning with "Prologue," a piece that embeds a kaleidoscopic, novel-like vision of a small agricultural town and a few of its inhabitants, these poems capture the exterior world and recontextualize its many forms through a dreamlike logic, harnessing radiant imagery and strong aural texture through lines and words that stir both mind and heart. Here, Wright reveals how the most luminous forms often dwell in even the darkest subjects and images.
Night Field Anecdote (Louisiana Literature Press, 2011)
Pulling together shards of life by trusting the music of the earth that rushes over his skull, William Wright’s lush poems in Night Field Anecdote look closely at the physical world and its cycles. In poem after poem, his ear becomes “an oar heaving toward birdsong and the day’s first wind.” Written by a curious and engaged mind that gathers images and events by association, these poems are life affirming because they link the human to the larger natural world. Weaving light into rhythm and image, Wright teaches us that suffering in the world must be acknowledged and explored in order to find the pleasure, the joy that brings the hope necessary for loving.
—Vivian Shipley, author of All Your Messages Have Been Erased and Hardboot
William Wright’s Night Field Anecdote is exactly the sort of early-career book for which I’ve been waiting, one that affirms the value of unrepentant and searching sincerity, and of attentiveness to one’s own existence, and of care and capacity for beautifully wrought phrases in the tradition of greats like Donald Hall and Theodore Roethke, even as it proclaims a distinct and important new voice in American Poetry. Wright’s family history braids through North Carolina with the nativity of a mountain creek to arrive at a young man with rare and intimate knowledge of the flora and fauna perpetually reclaiming his ruins and imagination.
—Jonathan Johnson, author of Hannah and the Mountain
and In the Land We Imagined Ourselves
William Wright's work gives me hope for the future of poetry. I recognize in his poems the urgency to get it said, to get it said right, to get it all said, and the understanding that true music is not the addition of pretty sounds to whatever you're saying, but the measure of how well you said it. Wright wants to communicate not the usual self- absorbed ennui, but the spirit of things, the spirit alive in their facts.
—Jack Butler, author of Jujitsu for Christ and The Kid Who Wanted to Be a Spaceman
In William Wright’s Night Field Anecdote, the voices of gravity, shadow, and interiority are given rare music to sing: Nearly every poem in the collection invites us to see nature poetry and nature itself in new ways. Once we hear the voices Wright has created to articulate his vision, we will not be able to take the easy way ever again. The voices contain echoes of Lorca and of Cavafy and of Rilke, but the guiding voice is all William Wright's and all of our time.
—Darrell Bourque, Louisiana Poet Laureate, 2009-2011,
author of In Ordinary Light: New and Selected Poems
—Vivian Shipley, author of All Your Messages Have Been Erased and Hardboot
William Wright’s Night Field Anecdote is exactly the sort of early-career book for which I’ve been waiting, one that affirms the value of unrepentant and searching sincerity, and of attentiveness to one’s own existence, and of care and capacity for beautifully wrought phrases in the tradition of greats like Donald Hall and Theodore Roethke, even as it proclaims a distinct and important new voice in American Poetry. Wright’s family history braids through North Carolina with the nativity of a mountain creek to arrive at a young man with rare and intimate knowledge of the flora and fauna perpetually reclaiming his ruins and imagination.
—Jonathan Johnson, author of Hannah and the Mountain
and In the Land We Imagined Ourselves
William Wright's work gives me hope for the future of poetry. I recognize in his poems the urgency to get it said, to get it said right, to get it all said, and the understanding that true music is not the addition of pretty sounds to whatever you're saying, but the measure of how well you said it. Wright wants to communicate not the usual self- absorbed ennui, but the spirit of things, the spirit alive in their facts.
—Jack Butler, author of Jujitsu for Christ and The Kid Who Wanted to Be a Spaceman
In William Wright’s Night Field Anecdote, the voices of gravity, shadow, and interiority are given rare music to sing: Nearly every poem in the collection invites us to see nature poetry and nature itself in new ways. Once we hear the voices Wright has created to articulate his vision, we will not be able to take the easy way ever again. The voices contain echoes of Lorca and of Cavafy and of Rilke, but the guiding voice is all William Wright's and all of our time.
—Darrell Bourque, Louisiana Poet Laureate, 2009-2011,
author of In Ordinary Light: New and Selected Poems
Bledsoe (Texas Review Press, 2011)
Bledsoe reads like a poem by Cormac McCarthy. In startling, vivid lyrics, Bledsoe unfolds as an intense drama of affliction and the mystery of consciousness and time, of curse and exorcism, of nightmare and the rejuvenating power of nature in cycles of growth and decay. Wright has created his own haunted world, with different voices, interior voices. Sometimes a prayer, sometimes a scream, sometimes a folksong, the poem is a narrative of care giving, devotion, violence, and love. You will not soon forget it.
—Robert Morgan
Author of Gap Creek and Terroir
William Wright’s Bledsoe has the ambition of an extended narrative reminiscent of the down-home, home-sung lyrics of Claudia Emerson’s Pinion. Bledsoe’s style, however, is more sparse and hungry, the words snapping with the crispness of a cold apple bitten into. This “unearthed gospel” of sorrow and loss in the rural south is seething with life and memorable language, sculpting a landscape where “insects chisel the night to a point,” which is exactly what Wright does, making radiance of darkness and finding dignity in affliction.
—R.T. Smith
Editor of Shenandoah
William Wright’s haunting new volume, Bledsoe, is a book-length paean-lament, chiseled into thirty-seven sections of truncated supple couplets. It is the odyssey of Durant Bledsoe, a mute Appalachian savant-seer, ultimately and literally orphaned, but also remanded to wander untended in the weir of his own preternatural psyche. Wright’s language, difficult to dub because it is so inspired, comes from that other inscrutable place as well – by turns like gentle rain, but more often like Gatling gun fire, a fusillade of linguistic and aural sophistication that is truly fascinating. The entire poem is fever dream-like, mythic, yet girded by a searing narrative rooted in, of all places, Yancey County, North Carolina – which rarifies this luminous book all the more.
—Joseph Bathanti
Through language wound tight as baling wire, Wright conjures Bledsoe out of the backwoods and into our world where he lodges like a burr in our imagination. Rarely has a contemporary poetic voice achieved the incantatory with such skill, echoes of Cormac McCarthy’s word-hoard pulsing throughout! Wright's couplets stride, stagger, and rage, burning Bledsoe's inner and outer landscapes like a cattle brand into our memory. I can imagine a medieval skald or jongleur singing this poem around a fire, his listeners' faces rapt with listening, as any reader of Bledsoe will be, lost in the spell cast by this powerful poem.
—Kathryn Stripling Byer
Author of Coming to Rest and Wildwood Flower
—Robert Morgan
Author of Gap Creek and Terroir
William Wright’s Bledsoe has the ambition of an extended narrative reminiscent of the down-home, home-sung lyrics of Claudia Emerson’s Pinion. Bledsoe’s style, however, is more sparse and hungry, the words snapping with the crispness of a cold apple bitten into. This “unearthed gospel” of sorrow and loss in the rural south is seething with life and memorable language, sculpting a landscape where “insects chisel the night to a point,” which is exactly what Wright does, making radiance of darkness and finding dignity in affliction.
—R.T. Smith
Editor of Shenandoah
William Wright’s haunting new volume, Bledsoe, is a book-length paean-lament, chiseled into thirty-seven sections of truncated supple couplets. It is the odyssey of Durant Bledsoe, a mute Appalachian savant-seer, ultimately and literally orphaned, but also remanded to wander untended in the weir of his own preternatural psyche. Wright’s language, difficult to dub because it is so inspired, comes from that other inscrutable place as well – by turns like gentle rain, but more often like Gatling gun fire, a fusillade of linguistic and aural sophistication that is truly fascinating. The entire poem is fever dream-like, mythic, yet girded by a searing narrative rooted in, of all places, Yancey County, North Carolina – which rarifies this luminous book all the more.
—Joseph Bathanti
Through language wound tight as baling wire, Wright conjures Bledsoe out of the backwoods and into our world where he lodges like a burr in our imagination. Rarely has a contemporary poetic voice achieved the incantatory with such skill, echoes of Cormac McCarthy’s word-hoard pulsing throughout! Wright's couplets stride, stagger, and rage, burning Bledsoe's inner and outer landscapes like a cattle brand into our memory. I can imagine a medieval skald or jongleur singing this poem around a fire, his listeners' faces rapt with listening, as any reader of Bledsoe will be, lost in the spell cast by this powerful poem.
—Kathryn Stripling Byer
Author of Coming to Rest and Wildwood Flower
Dark Orchard (Texas Review Press, 2006)
"In a world that is nearly awash in first books, William Wright's Dark Orchard stands out for its lyrical obsession with the heritage a son may have from parents and from the deeply felt landscape of childhood. . . . The language is filled with a kind of desolation and a beauty that is not quite despair, something that is better known, one suspects, by the young than by the rest of us. We should be grateful for this chance to rediscover its reach."-Phebe Davidson
"William Wright's poems welcome us into a rich and enchanting universe. Planted in the fecund soil of his native South Carolina, this book's vision is simultaneously delicate and dangerous, touching and alarming. Woven throughout with the subtle undertones of his poetic forebears (one sees Theodore Roethke, Robert Penn Warren, and James Wright dancing in the shadows), Dark Orchard is an impressive debut volume with a depth of insight that belies the author's youth, a collection that leaves me thirsting for the next book."-Stephen Gardner
"William Wright's poems welcome us into a rich and enchanting universe. Planted in the fecund soil of his native South Carolina, this book's vision is simultaneously delicate and dangerous, touching and alarming. Woven throughout with the subtle undertones of his poetic forebears (one sees Theodore Roethke, Robert Penn Warren, and James Wright dancing in the shadows), Dark Orchard is an impressive debut volume with a depth of insight that belies the author's youth, a collection that leaves me thirsting for the next book."-Stephen Gardner
CHAPBOOKS
April Creatures (Blue Horse Press, 2014)
William Wright's April Creatures begins with a boy's life, singular, private, pulsing with the sting of spring and the flushed dark, laden with the language of firsts and lasts, horses and wasps, worlds strung and dangling from the filaments of words. A book to savor. —Dorianne Laux
The close observations and sculpted language of William Wright's poems make the world a holy place. These poems brim with the restless energy of waking that leads us into ‘rooms of smoky light that house the myth.’ The myth is the beautiful and fragile existence of the creatures in these poems, from the boy who ponders a long-drowned woman to a caterpillar heavy with ‘something vital and black.’ Wright draws a world that is elemental and spirit drenched, and it is a world I want to live in.
—Al Maginnes
William Wright's April Creatures begins with a boy's life, singular, private, pulsing with the sting of spring and the flushed dark, laden with the language of firsts and lasts, horses and wasps, worlds strung and dangling from the filaments of words. A book to savor. —Dorianne Laux
The close observations and sculpted language of William Wright's poems make the world a holy place. These poems brim with the restless energy of waking that leads us into ‘rooms of smoky light that house the myth.’ The myth is the beautiful and fragile existence of the creatures in these poems, from the boy who ponders a long-drowned woman to a caterpillar heavy with ‘something vital and black.’ Wright draws a world that is elemental and spirit drenched, and it is a world I want to live in.
—Al Maginnes
Xylem & Heartwood (Finishing Line Press, 2013)
William Wright is a superlative poet. In this book of days and seasons, he reclaims for us from modern life our natural history. Something of Wordsworth, more in the matter than in the manner, brings the world's physical apparatus close even when he speaks of "this vanishing, / and later, starblown night." Without exaggeration, I say that his lines carry great power and open the way to a new, stunning lyricism.
—Kelly Cherry, author of The Life and Death of Poetry
Imagine a young Prospero afield in the rural South observing and inventing across a mysterious threshold where the two processes meet. William Wright is that conjurer, tasting everything from “dawn’s wolf-hued light” to “the fire of that cataclysmic star” and all the flora and fauna that move through such illuminations. His poetry in Xylem & Heartwood is lush with necessity, intoxicating with synaesthesia, riveting with what Robert Penn Warren called “the tangled glitter of syllables.” You’ll want to read these thrifty and resonant poems aloud, repeatedly.
—R. T. Smith, editor of Shenandoah and author of The Red Wolf
William Wright is the young American poet most likely to discover a new way to frame the deep paradoxes of life and language shown before by Coleridge, by Rilke, and by James Wright. His poems in Xylem & Heartwood display a rare understanding of nature and its processes, and an even rarer sensitivity to the way certain minds are compelled toward nature. Anyone who reads of the furrow plowed by the blonde mare, or of the shrouded conjuring of the milk witch, will recognize that Xylem & Heartwood is another fine thread William Wright has stitched into the flag of American poetry.
—Jesse Graves, author of Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine, winner of the 2011 Weatherford Award in Poetry and an Appalachian Writers’ Association Book of the Year Award
—Kelly Cherry, author of The Life and Death of Poetry
Imagine a young Prospero afield in the rural South observing and inventing across a mysterious threshold where the two processes meet. William Wright is that conjurer, tasting everything from “dawn’s wolf-hued light” to “the fire of that cataclysmic star” and all the flora and fauna that move through such illuminations. His poetry in Xylem & Heartwood is lush with necessity, intoxicating with synaesthesia, riveting with what Robert Penn Warren called “the tangled glitter of syllables.” You’ll want to read these thrifty and resonant poems aloud, repeatedly.
—R. T. Smith, editor of Shenandoah and author of The Red Wolf
William Wright is the young American poet most likely to discover a new way to frame the deep paradoxes of life and language shown before by Coleridge, by Rilke, and by James Wright. His poems in Xylem & Heartwood display a rare understanding of nature and its processes, and an even rarer sensitivity to the way certain minds are compelled toward nature. Anyone who reads of the furrow plowed by the blonde mare, or of the shrouded conjuring of the milk witch, will recognize that Xylem & Heartwood is another fine thread William Wright has stitched into the flag of American poetry.
—Jesse Graves, author of Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine, winner of the 2011 Weatherford Award in Poetry and an Appalachian Writers’ Association Book of the Year Award
Sleep Paralysis (Stepping Stones Press, 2012 Winner of the SC Poetry Initiative Prize)
In Sleep Paralysis, William Wright manages to find language to capture the pulse and shape of his landscape. In these poems, the world is rich with sensual triggers:: tastes, scents, the quality of light and the sound of aspens rubbing against each other. Winter drags us northward, bodies blister like fallen apples, and a man longs to be a potato sheltered by soil, waiting to "submit to the hunger of him who knocks / the earthen garments from [its] body, lift [it] into air." In the centerpiece of the collection, "Bledsoe," the simple tragic tale of Durant Bledsoe who kills his mother, a woman suffering from cancer, and accepts his fate, it told in a series of tightly drawn couplets dense with vivid images. It is hard to walk away from these poems without feeling that the natural world is a palpable, living thing of brute beauty and grace. These poems sing, of course, but mostly, they impress us with their commitment to offering fresh language (full of sonic and syntactic genius) with which to reintroduce us to our on earth.
—Kwame Dawes, Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner
Chancellor's Professor of English
—Kwame Dawes, Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner
Chancellor's Professor of English
The Ghost Narratives (Finishing Line Press, 2008)
Quartet: Selected Poems from the Editors of Batture Willow Press (Batture Willow Press, 2012)
EDITIONS
(as series editor and volume co-editor)
Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (ed. with Daniel Cross Turner) (2016)
A collection of contemporary poems exploring the grit of work, love, and the land down South
Daniel Cross Turner and William Wright's anthology Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry centers on the darker side of Southern experience while presenting a remarkable array of poets from diverse backgrounds in the American South. As tough-minded as they are high-minded, the sixty contemporary poets and two hundred poems anthologized in Hard Lines enhance the powerful genre of "Grit Lit."
The volume gathers the work of poets who have for decades formed the heart of Southern poetry as well as that of emerging voices who will soon become significant figures in Southern literature. These poems sting our senses into awareness of a gritty world down South: hard work, hard love, hard drinking, hard times; but they also explore the importance of the land and rural experience, as well as race- , gender- , and class-based conflicts.
Readers will see, hear (for poetry is meant to ring in the ears), and feel (for poetry is meant to beat in the blood); there is plenty of raucousness in this anthology. And yet the cultural conflicts that ignite Southern wildness are often depicted in a manner that is lyrical without becoming lugubrious, mournful but not maudlin. Some of these poets are coming to terms with a visibly transforming culture—a "roughness" in and of itself. Indeed many of these poets are helping to change the definition of the South. The anthology also features biographical information on each poet in addition to further reading suggestions and scholarly sources on contemporary poetry.
"Deftly arranging poets both new and old, Hard Lines is at once easy on the eyes and stimulating to the mind—an anthology to be read and subsequently consulted."—Casey Clabough, author of Inhabiting Contemporary Southern & Appalachian Literature
"Well it's about time for this great anthology, Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. I mean, it's about Time. Time and Timelessness. Editors Wright and Turner offer a wonderful selection of writers wrestling with, and extolling, the most intricate, beautiful, and perplexing aspects of our South."—George Singleton, author of Calloustown
Daniel Cross Turner and William Wright's anthology Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry centers on the darker side of Southern experience while presenting a remarkable array of poets from diverse backgrounds in the American South. As tough-minded as they are high-minded, the sixty contemporary poets and two hundred poems anthologized in Hard Lines enhance the powerful genre of "Grit Lit."
The volume gathers the work of poets who have for decades formed the heart of Southern poetry as well as that of emerging voices who will soon become significant figures in Southern literature. These poems sting our senses into awareness of a gritty world down South: hard work, hard love, hard drinking, hard times; but they also explore the importance of the land and rural experience, as well as race- , gender- , and class-based conflicts.
Readers will see, hear (for poetry is meant to ring in the ears), and feel (for poetry is meant to beat in the blood); there is plenty of raucousness in this anthology. And yet the cultural conflicts that ignite Southern wildness are often depicted in a manner that is lyrical without becoming lugubrious, mournful but not maudlin. Some of these poets are coming to terms with a visibly transforming culture—a "roughness" in and of itself. Indeed many of these poets are helping to change the definition of the South. The anthology also features biographical information on each poet in addition to further reading suggestions and scholarly sources on contemporary poetry.
"Deftly arranging poets both new and old, Hard Lines is at once easy on the eyes and stimulating to the mind—an anthology to be read and subsequently consulted."—Casey Clabough, author of Inhabiting Contemporary Southern & Appalachian Literature
"Well it's about time for this great anthology, Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. I mean, it's about Time. Time and Timelessness. Editors Wright and Turner offer a wonderful selection of writers wrestling with, and extolling, the most intricate, beautiful, and perplexing aspects of our South."—George Singleton, author of Calloustown
The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume I: South Carolina (Texas Review Press, 2007)
The Southern Poetry Anthology: South Carolina is the first in a series of poetry anthologies that will focus on contemporary poetry of the American South, region by region. In this inaugural collection, editors William Wright and Stephen Gardner have collected and compiled the work of seventy-six poets who claim—or have claimed sometime in their life—South Carolina as home and as a palpable influence of their work. The Southern Poetry Anthology determines to focus acutely on the often mentioned “sense of place” and to let the poetry define what “place” means, whether in historical, autobiographical, geographical, or purely poetic manifestations.
“The Southern Poetry Anthology: South Carolina includes seventy-six contemporary poets with original, energetic and unmistakable voices who have called the Palmetto state home. Shadowed and illumined by South Carolina’s complex and rich heritage dating from 1514, when Spaniard’s explored the state’s coast, this collection will enrich contemporary American life because selections reflect the multifaceted character of the state that has played a major role in events that shaped our nation. The collection contains, in the words of the editors, “a hearty lot, a lusty lot, a crew of disparate voices … that echo with a cacophony turned beautiful.” This remarkable anthology is a must read for all who value poetry and the power it has to reshape our world. Infused with a deep understanding of what it is to be human, these poems lodge first in the mind, then anchor in the heart, teaching it to persevere.”
—Vivian Shipley
“For anyone who thinks that poetry stopped in South Carolina after Henry Timrod and Paul Hamilton Hayne or, for that matter, even James Dickey, this generous and well-selected anthology of poems by poets who were born or lived in that state will prove to be a real eye-opener. These pages are full of those quiet recognitions, startling surprises, and sudden revelations of truth that only the best poetry can provide. I read it with the same kind of excitement that a good novel can provide, and I urge it upon all those readers who need to know (or who already know) that poetry is alive and well and flourishing in the Palmetto State.”
—R.H.W. Dillard
“The Southern Poetry Anthology: South Carolina includes seventy-six contemporary poets with original, energetic and unmistakable voices who have called the Palmetto state home. Shadowed and illumined by South Carolina’s complex and rich heritage dating from 1514, when Spaniard’s explored the state’s coast, this collection will enrich contemporary American life because selections reflect the multifaceted character of the state that has played a major role in events that shaped our nation. The collection contains, in the words of the editors, “a hearty lot, a lusty lot, a crew of disparate voices … that echo with a cacophony turned beautiful.” This remarkable anthology is a must read for all who value poetry and the power it has to reshape our world. Infused with a deep understanding of what it is to be human, these poems lodge first in the mind, then anchor in the heart, teaching it to persevere.”
—Vivian Shipley
“For anyone who thinks that poetry stopped in South Carolina after Henry Timrod and Paul Hamilton Hayne or, for that matter, even James Dickey, this generous and well-selected anthology of poems by poets who were born or lived in that state will prove to be a real eye-opener. These pages are full of those quiet recognitions, startling surprises, and sudden revelations of truth that only the best poetry can provide. I read it with the same kind of excitement that a good novel can provide, and I urge it upon all those readers who need to know (or who already know) that poetry is alive and well and flourishing in the Palmetto State.”
—R.H.W. Dillard
The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume II: Mississippi (Texas Review Press, 2009)
From the state of literary giants
Often celebrated as the Literary State of the South, and quoted to have more writers per capita than any other state in the Union, Mississippi remains famous for its fiction writers: William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Barry Hannah, Willie Morris, and Walker Percy, among many others. Relatively unsung are those who dedicate themselves to the older craft of poetry. This book seeks to alleviate that absence and collect the best poetry written in contemporary Mississippi, to share with curious readers the luminous verses this beautiful state engenders.
The second edition of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume II: Mississippi, seeks to continue the aspiration of the series: to take a snapshot of contemporary poetry in the American South and to observe how the “sense of place” manifests in the work of native poets or those just passing through. Featured in this edition, poets Natasha Trethewey, Gordon Weaver, Angela Ball, Paul Ruffin, Julia Johnson, T.R. Hummer, and many others reveal the Magnolia State as a place in which brilliant art continues to bloom.
Often celebrated as the Literary State of the South, and quoted to have more writers per capita than any other state in the Union, Mississippi remains famous for its fiction writers: William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Barry Hannah, Willie Morris, and Walker Percy, among many others. Relatively unsung are those who dedicate themselves to the older craft of poetry. This book seeks to alleviate that absence and collect the best poetry written in contemporary Mississippi, to share with curious readers the luminous verses this beautiful state engenders.
The second edition of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume II: Mississippi, seeks to continue the aspiration of the series: to take a snapshot of contemporary poetry in the American South and to observe how the “sense of place” manifests in the work of native poets or those just passing through. Featured in this edition, poets Natasha Trethewey, Gordon Weaver, Angela Ball, Paul Ruffin, Julia Johnson, T.R. Hummer, and many others reveal the Magnolia State as a place in which brilliant art continues to bloom.
The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia
(Texas Review Press, 2010)
For reasons that are not entirely clear, there has been an explosion of poetry in the Southern Appalachian region in recent years. Perhaps this creative surge has been inspired by the rapid changes in the region, as the vast hunting ranges of the Cherokees are crossed by superhighways, and golf courses, casinos, condominiums, and shopping malls spread into the shadows of the highest peaks. Or perhaps the poetry is a celebration of a region still discovering itself, its heritage and resources. What is clear is that much of the best poetry of our time is being written in or about the Southern mountains, with unprecedented diversity, artistry, freshness, and humanity. Here is a poetry of place and people, of history, sometimes sad, often comic, a poetry of haunting voices, vision, music, and story. This anthology is a showcase of some of the best poetry we have, from the place the music comes from.
—Robert Morgan
—Robert Morgan
The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IV: Louisiana (Texas Review Press, 2011)
As a territory, and later a state, Louisiana has survived French rule, Spanish rule, Rebel rule, and even Republican rule. And somehow the people and place have managed to retain their culture and character. Whether it’s been the Natural State, the Dream State, or the Sportsman’s Paradise, Louisiana has always been a state of resiliency, community, and joie de vivre. Poem by poem, the pages of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IV: Louisiana demonstrate the variety and resiliency of a state that’s overcome wars, hurricanes, and floods to make more of itself every time. The lines between these covers are as beautiful and diverse as the people of Louisiana, as rich as the state’s history, and as promising as the future we’re all working towards.
—Jack B. Bedell
—Jack B. Bedell
The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia (Texas Review Press, 2012)
A multitude of new voices is creating a multitude of very fine poems in Georgia. Are they in the same tradition and styles as the Southern poetry of the past? Sometimes. But so many new forces are washing into our poetry now that it seems that the best approach to such flux is to be glad and to embrace those forces, to contain multitudes. The time of the major poet, and perhaps even the major poem, might be a thing of the past—at least for a while. But so many other things are happening, and being written, that a new village of poets thrives throughout Georgia. And the editors of this anthology have indeed performed their duty well, for it is a garland of flowers, beautiful and more multicolored than anyone might have imagined, and a most wonderful way to spend some afternoons and feel the earth made new again.
—Leon Stokesbury
—Leon Stokesbury
The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee (Texas Review Press, 2013)
The state of Tennessee is widely recognized as a home of great music, and its geographic regions are as distinct as Memphis blues, Nashville country, and Bristol old-time sounds. Tennessee’s literary heritage offers equal variety and quality, as home to the Fugitive Agrarian Poets, as well as a signature voice from the Black Arts Movement. Few states present such a multicultural panorama as does the Volunteer State.
The poems in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee engage the storied histories, diverse cultures, and vibrant rural and urban landscapes of the region. Among the more than 120 poets represented are Pulitzer and Bollingen Prize-winner Charles Wright, Brittingham Award-winner Lynn Powell, and Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize-winners Rick Hilles and Arthur Smith.
The book includes an introduction from renowned poet Jeff Daniel Marion, who in 1978 received the first literary fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission. Too, the book celebrates relatively young and gifted voices. This important anthology will stand for many years as the definitive poetic document for the state of Tennessee.
The poems in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee engage the storied histories, diverse cultures, and vibrant rural and urban landscapes of the region. Among the more than 120 poets represented are Pulitzer and Bollingen Prize-winner Charles Wright, Brittingham Award-winner Lynn Powell, and Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize-winners Rick Hilles and Arthur Smith.
The book includes an introduction from renowned poet Jeff Daniel Marion, who in 1978 received the first literary fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission. Too, the book celebrates relatively young and gifted voices. This important anthology will stand for many years as the definitive poetic document for the state of Tennessee.
The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina (Texas Review Press, 2014)