Real Love
A Kentucky poet sings solidarity to the landscape, language, and love that claim her.
Poetry
Where We Go From Here
Looking back through decades of struggle, uncertainty, and hope
By Mary Dean Lee /
Where I’m From: Seven Decades in Seven Scenes
An island poet from North Carolina recounts a life defined by books, music, and events far beyond her control.
By Deb Bowen /
To Make Peace With My Life
An Arkansas veteran and professor unearths the South’s ambiguous tracks.
By Kae Chatman /
What Lives On
A Tennessee musician wrestles with ghosts—the troubling, the beloved, and the holy.
By Stephen Simmons /
What We Love, What We Become
Illumination can spring from anywhere: the beach, our vices, or the sacred tomato sandwich.
By Paul Jones /
We’ll Get By
Two poems that take an unflinching look inside a struggling family in Southern Appalachia.
By Becky Parker /
Balms in the Woods
In summer’s dreadful heat, unfulfilled threats of rain and unfulfilled desires in our chests leave us wanting.
By KB Ballentine /
Making Berry Ink
In 1785, on the land where Clemson University now stands, the United States government signed a treaty. It promised the Cherokee people, “The hatchet shall be forever buried.” But that didn’t save the Cherokee town of Esseneca.
By Carson Colenbaugh /
He Chooses to Remember
Thoughts on reverie, restlessness, and recklessness from the poet laureate of West Virginia.