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 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.
