The shifting balance of one’s past, present, and future self is at the heart of this collection. Poems contemplate human darkness, femininity, grief, innocence, finding how they coexist and intersect while confronting their origins. Intimacy, memory, and navigating adulthood in the mythos of the South pull together nostalgia and seeks the affirmation of how to move forward after life-altering moments

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 focu...