There are two sections to this poetry collection. The first consists of poems about pioneer settlers along the valley created by the Kentucky River, inspired by the poet’s ancestors. The second part is inspired by her own explorations of the river further west near her Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, home when she was younger. I admire the fact that she starts the first section with Dragging Canoe, the Cherokee who split off from the rest of his tribe when they agreed in 1775 to sell what became mostly Kentucky and Tennessee to white people at the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals. “Lynnell Edwards skillfully layers incidents from this turbulent past upon her own childhood’s ‘summer days snug / and certain in a great green valley’ that was once a place of so much hardship. This Great Green Valley is a fine chapter in that story.” – Joe Survant. “In language of warning and wonder, Edwards invites us to think, in complex ways, about the ‘fossil bed[s] and shale flint[s]” we call home.” – Kiki Petrosino. The poet, Lynnell Edwards teaches at Spalding University. This is her fourth poetry collection.
Frankfort, Kentucky: Broadstone Media: 2020. 40 pages. Trade paperback,.