Poems: New and Selected
α’αααΈααααα βα’αα‘α·α ααααΌαα·αααα
In this incandescent, profound, and accessible collection, beloved and award-winning poet, novelist, and short-story writer Ron Rash vividly channels the rhythms of life in Appalachia, deftly capturing the panoply of individuals who are its heart and soulβmen and women inured to misfortune and hard times yet defined by tremendous fortitude, resilience, and a fierce sense of community.
In precise, supple language that swerves from the stark to the luminous, Rash richly describes the splendor of the natural landscape and poignantly renders the lives of those dependent on its bountyβin cotton mills and tobacco fields, farmlands and forests. The haunting memories and shared histories of these peopleβtheir rituals and traditionsβanimate this land, and are celebrated in Rashβs crystalline, intensely imagined verse.
With an eye for the surprising and vivid detail, Ron Rash powerfully captures the sorrows and exaltations of this wondrous world he knows intimately. Illuminating and indelible, Poems demonstrates his rich talents and confirms his legacy as a standard-bearer for the literature of the American South.
α’αααΈβα’ααααα·αααα
Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank OβConnor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.
