The Southern Poetry Anthology North Carolina

Robert Morgan and Kathryn Stripling Byer, Al Maginnes and Cathy Smith Bowers, Thomas Raine Crowe and Michael McFee, as well as many new voices. . . Indeed, the variegation of the Tar Heel State's landscapes, as well as its rich history, is reflected through the myriad voices of its contemporary verse. As with other volumes of The Southern Poetry Anthology, this book--full of a wide gamut of poetic styles and approaches--will appeal to many readers, prove an excellent teaching resource for North Carolina students of literature, and serve as the definitive poetic document for North Carolina for many years. Conceived by Series Editor William Wright in 2003, The Southern Poetry Anthology is a projected twelve-to-sixteen volume project celebrating established and emerging poets of the American South, published by Texas Review Press. Inspired by single-volume anthologies such as Leon Stokesbury's The Made Thing, Gil Allen's A Ninety-Six Sampler, and Guy Owen and Mary C. Williams' Contemporary Southern Poetry: an Anthology, The Southern Poetry Anthology aspires to provide readers with a documentary-like survey of the best poetry being written in the American South at the present moment. Specifically, the editors' goals are twofold: first, to re-establish poetry of the South as a major presence in American literature, and second, to include a greater range of poets from the South to introduce a new poetic geography, a fresh corpus of what we understand to be "Southern Poetry."

Edited by William Wright and Paul Ruffin, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia brings together over one hundred of Georgia's poets, including David Bottoms, Natasha Trethewey, Leon Stokesbury, Thomas Lux, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Alice Friman, Judson Mitcham, and Stephen Corey, as well as myriad other luminous voices. The volume marks the fifth of the seriesArt & Literature has called “one of the most ambitious projects in contemporary Southern letters.”

Every place has its own poetry. For some places, the poetry appears in the tones of voice between neighbors in the grocery store, or in the spirit people share when a high school football team brings them out of their houses on Friday evenings, or even through the sounds engines make as they idle in traffic on the road out of the city after a workday. The poetry of Appalachia sings in all those familiar ways, but also in the music of the particular poems collected in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III: Southern Appalachia. This anthology of contemporary poetry arrives from one of America's most vibrant literary communities, an area with a rich storytelling history and beautiful natural landscape, the often misunderstood Appalachian South. Readers familiar with writing from Appalachia will be pleased to see work from such favorites as Charles Wright, Robert Morgan, and Fred Chappell, yet will be intrigued by the already distinctive voices of emerging talents like Melissa Range and D. Antwan Stewart. This collection of poems is the only one of its kind, a snapshot album of a timeless place, as it is represented at the present moment. "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

The second edition features twelve new poets as well as new work by Donald Justice, T. R. Hummer, Dave Smith, Pattiann Rogers, Andrew Hudgins, Henry Taylor, Gerald Barrax, Rodney Jones, and others. Among the new additions are Mark Jarman, Cathy Smith Bowers, and Charlie Smith. Many teachers realize that the best way to get their students to relate to poetry is to show them poems that contain landscapes and subjects they understand and can identify with. Leon Stokesbury has put together a richly varied collection used in classrooms not only in the South but all over the country as a means of studying the important influence of southern poetry on American literature. With the publication of the second edition of The Made Thing, Stokesbury has marked the end of the twentieth century and the rise to prominence of southern writers. This collection serves as a substantial sampling of poets whose works span more than five decades and who explore the rich personal and cultural history that extends beyond the boundaries of the South.

Home of the first settlement in the United States and known as Old Dominion and The Mother of Presidents, the state of Virginia’s artistic output proves among the most fecund in the nation, evidenced in this ninth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology. This collection includes well-known, established, and celebrated poets such as Charles Wright, Claudia Emerson, Gregory Orr, Ellen Bryant Voigt, R. T. Smith, Forrest Gander, and Rita Dove, and the editors have dedicated equal focus on newer, diverse poets who continue to broaden and enrich the literary legacy of this beautiful state.

This anthology centres 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'