T"he Southern Poetry Anthology Volume I: ""South Carolina" is the first in a series of poetry anthologies that will focus on contemporary poetry of the American South, region by region. In this inaugural collection, editors William Wright and Stephen Gardner have collected and compiled the work of seventy-six poets who claim--or have claimed sometime in their life--South Carolina as home and as a palpable influence on their work.

Often celebrated as the Literary State of the South, and quoted to have more writers per capita than any other state in the Union, Mississippi remains famous for its fiction writers: William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Barry Hannah, Willie Morris, and Walker Percy, among many others. Relatively unsung are those who dedicate themselves to the older craft of poetry. This book seeks to alleviate that absence and collect the best poetry written in contemporary Mississippi, to share with curious readers the luminous verses this beautiful state engenders. The second edition of "The Southern Poetry...

"Why He Doesn't Sleep: The Selected Poems of Stephen Gardner "collects the best poetry of an underappreciated writer, an extremely popular professor whose teaching inspired many students to become serious poets themselves. Gardner was known to invest himself in helping others more than in his own work, and so this overdue collection offers exposure to an interesting, variegated, and genuinely passionate writer.
GOING HOME
Down the road, lying with my face
Pressed into my father's lap, the wheel
He held claiming most of the space.
But I squeezed in, bending up
My...