These are persona poems in three sections. In the first section the narrators speak of small-town life. In the second they experience natural surroundings, and in the third the two worlds find a confluence. “Kendrick's poems are at once documentary and unforgettably imagined. Their pervasive narrative drive streams with revelatory blinding diction and ghosts that pass through walls "to slip free from gravity's hold / & rise / as columns of smoke." What a fine book.”--Joseph Bathanti. “Kendrick teaches us that in these moments of restoration and reinvention, in these imaginings of what something is and can be, we find connections. We find ourselves.” --Adam Vines. The poet, Robert Lee Kendrick, is a high school teacher with a PhD in 18th Century British literature who lives in Clemson, South Carolina. This is his first book.
Oak Ridge, Tennesse: The Iris Press, 2018. 86 pages. Trade paperback