Hard Lines

"This book is essential for anyone interested in the literature of the American South! These editors not only provide a look at those poets who, for some years, have formed the core of Southern poetry, they also introduce us to a great number of exciting new voices. In rounding up this group, Turner and Wright have done an outstanding job!"—David Bottoms

"Hard Lines is best read slowly, a few strong poems at a time. It celebrates the enduring traditions of the narrative in Southern poetics, and the collection is at most thought-provoking when poems embody a present-South that interrogates its past-South shadow."—Grist Journal

"This book is essential for anyone interested in the literature of the American South! These editors not only provide a look at those poets who, for some years, have formed the core of Southern poetry, they also introduce us to a great number of exciting new voices. In rounding up this group, Turner and Wright have done an outstanding job!"—David Bottoms

"Hard Lines is best read slowly, a few strong poems at a time. It celebrates the enduring traditions of the narrative in Southern poetics, and the collection is at most thought-provoking when poems embody a present-South that interrogates its past-South shadow."—Grist Journal

"Hard Lines is a bold and compelling anthology. Turner and Wright's selections focus on verse with ominous qualities, but the human experience and the natural world are encompassed in all their paradoxical dimensions. Some of the poems will be familiar and others are unknown gems. The cumulative effect is powerful; it's difficult to put this book down."—Ernest Suarez, Catholic University, vice president, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers

"Deftly arranging poets both new and old, Hard Lines is at once easy on the eyes and stimulating to the mind—an anthology to be read and subsequently consulted."—Casey Clabough, author of Inhabiting Contemporary Southern & Appalachian Literature

"Turner and Wright have done us all a great, and intriguing, favor in Hard Lines. First, they have made it possible, in our classrooms, to give chapter and verse in discussions of the politics of 20th century American poetry. . . . And second, Turner and Wright have made it possible to fantasize a review of Hard Lines by Helen Vendler. If she had issue with Rita Dove's editing, what would she say about this?"—Michael Kreyling, Vanderbilt University

"Well it's about time for this great anthology, Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. I mean, it's about Time. Time and Timelessness. Editors Wright and Turner offer a wonderful selection of writers wrestling with, and extolling, the most intricate, beautiful, and perplexing aspects of our South."—George Singleton, author of Calloustown

"Hard Lines . . . carries the full sonic and spiritual load of southerly experience along lines that have given even surrogate southerners like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards their whole rolling pulse of musication. It's a local mix for a global audience. This is a collection that rocks, rolls, and second lines its readers through freshly imprinted soundings of poetic narrative and voice."—Keith Cartwright, author of Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways

"Hard Lines is a bold and compelling anthology. Turner and Wright's selections focus on verse with ominous qualities, but the human experience and the natural world are encompassed in all their paradoxical dimensions. Some of the poems will be familiar and others are unknown gems. The cumulative effect is powerful; it's difficult to put this book down."—Ernest Suarez, Catholic University, vice president, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers

"Deftly arranging poets both new and old, Hard Lines is at once easy on the eyes and stimulating to the mind—an anthology to be read and subsequently consulted."—Casey Clabough, author of Inhabiting Contemporary Southern & Appalachian Literature

"Turner and Wright have done us all a great, and intriguing, favor in Hard Lines. First, they have made it possible, in our classrooms, to give chapter and verse in discussions of the politics of 20th century American poetry. . . . And second, Turner and Wright have made it possible to fantasize a review of Hard Lines by Helen Vendler. If she had issue with Rita Dove's editing, what would she say about this?"—Michael Kreyling, Vanderbilt University

"Well it's about time for this great anthology, Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. I mean, it's about Time. Time and Timelessness. Editors Wright and Turner offer a wonderful selection of writers wrestling with, and extolling, the most intricate, beautiful, and perplexing aspects of our South."—George Singleton, author of Calloustown

"Hard Lines . . . carries the full sonic and spiritual load of southerly experience along lines that have given even surrogate southerners like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards their whole rolling pulse of musication. It's a local mix for a global audience. This is a collection that rocks, rolls, and second lines its readers through freshly imprinted soundings of poetic narrative and voice."—Keith Cartwright, author of Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways