Hard Lines

Hard Lines

Rough South Poetry

  • Author: Turner, Daniel Cross; Wright, William
  • Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
  • ISBN: 9781611176360
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781611176377
  • eISBN Epub: 9781611176377
  • Place of publication:  South Carolina , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2016
  • Month: April
  • Language: English

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 some 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 sensesinto 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.

Featured Poets: Betty Adcock, David Bottoms, Kathryn Stripling Byer, James Dickey, Rodney Jones, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ron Rash, Dave Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Charles Wright, Fred Chappell, Kelly Cherry, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Kate Daniels, Kwame Dawes, Claudia Emerson, Andrew Hudgins, T. R. Hummer, Robert Morgan, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Dan Albergotti, Tarfia Faizullah, Forrest Gander, Terrance Hayes, Judy Jordan, John Lane, Michael McFee, Paul Ruffin, Steve Scafidi, Jake Adam York

  • Cover
  • HARD LINES
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • CONTENTS
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • BETTY ADCOCK
    • Burnt Offerings
    • Rising Star, 1985
    • If Their Voices Were Visible Entities
  • DAN ALBERGOTTI
    • Notes for a Poem in Which God Does Not Appear
    • Lesson of the Elements: Fire
    • Lesson of the Elements: Earth
  • PAUL ALLEN
    • Altar Call
    • After an All-Nighter Camping with a Young Friend at Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina
  • BRIAN BARKER
    • In the City of Fallen Rebels
    • The Trees of the South
    • Dog Gospel
  • COLEMAN BARKS
    • Lard Gourd
    • Grace
    • Luke and the Duct Tape
  • JACK B. BEDELL
    • Travail
    • Saturday Night Crab Boils
    • Loup Garou
  • DESTINY O. BIRDSONG
    • Sugar
  • DAVID BOTTOMS
    • Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump
    • Under the Vulture-Tree
    • Under the Boathouse
    • In a U-Haul North of Damascus
  • BESMILR BRIGHAM
    • The Hurricane
    • Winston Weathers
  • KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER
    • Dagger
    • Bait
    • Delivery
  • FRED CHAPPELL
    • The Artful Dodger Out of the Bag
  • KELLY CHERRY
    • Wild Dogwood
    • The Heat Down South (Richmond, 1955)
    • Gulfport
  • MICHAEL CHITWOOD
    • A Childhood
    • The One Day
    • Skinning
  • JIM CLARK
    • Black Dog Shadrick Mayhew
    • Waking Up Drunk
    • Once More, the Night
  • ALLISON ADELLE HEDGE COKE
    • Off-Season
    • Packin’ Four Corner Nabs
  • DANIEL CORRIE
    • Sleeping and Waking
  • KATE DANIELS
    • Autobiography of a White Girl Raised in the South
    • Louisiana, Late Summer
    • The Figure Eight
  • KWAME DAWES
    • Thief
    • Reburial
  • JAMES DICKEY
    • Cherrylog Road
    • The Sheep Child
    • Canebrake
  • R. H. W. DILLARD
    • A Friday Night Kind of Sonnet
    • Event; A Gathering; Vastation
  • CLAUDIA EMERSON
    • Ephemeris
    • Practice Blood
    • Third
  • TARFIA FAIZULLAH
    • Nocturne in Need of a Bitch
    • The Streetlamp above Me Darkens:
  • FORREST GANDER
    • From Life of Johnson Upside Your Head
    • Lovegreen
  • GEORGE GARRETT
    • Whistling in the Dark
    • Buzzard
    • Luck’s Shining Child
  • JESSE GRAVES
    • River Gods
    • Firing Order
    • Elegy for a Hay Rake
  • JEFF HARDIN
    • On the Eve of a New Millennium
  • ASHLEY MACE HAVIRD
    • At Stonewall
    • Lunar Eclipse
  • DAVID HAVIRD
    • In Seventh Grade
    • Downriver with Uncle Paul
  • TERRANCE HAYES
    • Ode to Big Trend
    • Palmetto State
  • HASTINGS HENSEL
    • Jump-Start
    • The Rope in the Motor
    • Filet
  • RON HOUCHIN
    • Meanwhile
    • Outhouse
    • The Broken Eye
  • REBECCA GAYLE HOWELL
    • No One Was Born Here
    • We’re on a Need to Know Basis
    • The Quick and the Dead
  • DAVID HUDDLE
    • Even Then I Knew
    • Evidence Contributing to a Late Illumination
    • Trotlines
  • ANDREW HUDGINS
    • The Names of the Lost
    • My Daughter
    • In
    • Out
  • T. R. HUMMER
    • Slow Train through Georgia
    • The Antichrist in Arkansas
    • Greek
  • TJ JARRETT
    • Of Late, I Have Been Thinking about Despair
    • Late That Summer
    • Meridian, MS, 1978: Miss Polly Attends the Altar at Mt. Zion
  • RODNEY JONES
    • The Power of the Quote
  • JUDY JORDAN
    • From Pete’s Lake
  • TERRY L. KENNEDY
    • Concerning the Hunt
    • Concerning the Puppies
  • YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
    • From Requiem
    • The White Handkerchief
    • Augury at Sunset
  • JOHN LANE
    • The Day Andy Griffith Died
    • Tony Dorsett and His Band
    • Wreckage
  • NATON LESLIE
    • Completion
    • Country
  • ED MADDEN
    • Inferno
  • AL MAGINNES
    • Pornography
    • Firefly Gospel
    • Music from Small Towns
  • JEFF MANN
    • A Brief Christian Visit; or, The Butch Bottom Sends Old Ladies Packing
    • The Shepherdstown Sweetshop
  • JEFF DANIEL MARION
    • Hand-Me-Down Days
    • Orpha
    • Winter Watch
  • LINDA PARSONS MARION
    • Chicken Pickin’
    • My Stepmother Takes Me to the Fair
    • Repossessed
  • CHRISTOPHER MARTIN
    • Parable of the Carolina Chickadee
    • Visiting Wildman’s Civil War Surplus and Herb Shop
  • CHRIS MATTINGLY
    • No ’Count
    • Summertime
  • MICHAEL MCFEE
    • Yaller
    • Breaks
    • Cottonmouth
  • RAY MCMANUS
    • Dog Box
    • Disturbing Remains
    • Staying in the Truck
  • THORPE MOECKEL
    • Spittoono Lily
    • Cold Range, Hot Range
    • Living by Water
  • ROBERT MORGAN
    • Manure Pile
    • The Gift of Tongues
    • Man and Machine
  • RICARDO NAZARIO Y COLÓN
    • Mi Nuevo Hogar: Kentucky
  • TARA POWELL
    • Watching Deliverance with My Students
  • RON RASH
    • The Skeleton in the Dogwood
    • Winter Lightning
    • Animal Hides
  • JANISSE RAY
    • Land of Milk and Honey
  • PAUL RUFFIN
    • Frozen Over
    • Circling
    • Gigging Frogs
    • Sawdust Pile
  • STEVE SCAFIDI
    • To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire
    • The West Virginia Copper-Wing
    • The Hillbilly Break-Dance and the Talking Crow
  • JAMES SEAY
    • It All Comes Together Outside the Restroom in Hogansville
    • Kelly Dug a Hole
  • DAVE SMITH
    • How to Get to Green Springs
    • In the Yard, Late Summer
    • The Tire Hangs in the Yard
  • R. T. SMITH
    • A Local Doc, over Rocky Lunchtime Bourbon, Speaks of Barter and Hopeful Home Remedies
    • Horton’s Store
    • Dar He
  • SHERYL ST. GERMAIN
    • Addiction
    • Always Wear Clean Underwear, You Never Know When You Might Get in a Car Accident
    • Wild Ones
  • LEON STOKESBURY
    • To Laura Phelan: 1886–1906
    • Midway
  • RICHARD TILLINGHAST
    • Lost Cove & the Rose of San Antone
    • Allen’s Station: They
  • DENO TRAKAS
    • End of August, 2005
    • Walking to Work on a Snowy Morning
  • NATASHA TRETHEWEY
    • Disclosure
    • From “Native Guard”
    • Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright on Dissecting the White Negro, 1851
    • Onlookers Gathered at the Traveling Chair’s Arrival
  • ADAM VINES
    • Prologue and Return
    • Mine Rats
    • The Old Salt’s Brag
  • ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT
    • Bright Leaf
    • The Trust
    • Cow
    • Owl
  • G. C. WALDREP
    • Elberta
    • Vertigo
    • Sustainable Agriculture
  • FRANK X WALKER
    • Spell to Give the Woman a Head
    • How to Swallow an Elephant
    • Cure to Eliminate the N-Word
  • ROBERT WEST
    • Mountaintop Removal
    • Cornfield
  • JAMES WHITEHEAD
    • A Local Man Remembers Betty Fuller
    • The Alabama Man Remembers All He Can about the Battered Children and the Woman with Almost Perfect Skin in Mobile Seven Years Ago
  • AMY WRIGHT
    • In That Place
  • CHARLES WRIGHT
    • Driving through Tennessee
    • Lost Bodies
  • WILLIAM WRIGHT
    • Trumpet Creeper
    • Rabid Cat
    • Triptych for the Days before Her Passage
  • JAKE ADAM YORK
    • Collect
    • Self-Portrait in a Plate-Glass Window
    • Letter Written on a Hundred Dollar Bill
    • Inscription for Air
  • The Contributors
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Index of Authors and Titles

Subjects

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

By subscribing, you accept our Privacy Policy