Working the Dirt: An Anthology of Southern Poets

By Jennifer Horne

Book Overview

Finalist for the SIBA Book Award

A loamy volume of verse thematically inspired, Working the Dirt celebrates Southerners' connections to the land. The selected poems share themes of gardening, farming, and the rich Southern soil. The approximately one hundred poets, known and lesser-known, living and dead, include: Fred Chappell, Walter McDonald, A. R. Ammons, Robert Morgan, Wendell Berry, Henry Taylor, Tom Dent, Jesse Stuart, Jim Wayne Miller, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Marion Montgomery, James Whitehead, C. D. Wright, George Scarbrough, Ahmos Zu-Bolton II, Thad Stem, Jr., William Sprunt, Donald Justice, Thomas Rabbitt, James Dickey, Rick Lott, John Allison, Edwin Godsey, Richard Jackson, Nikki Giovanni, Alvin Aubert, Margaret Walker, Emily Hiestand, Robert Gibbons, John Stone, Coppie Green, Bonnie Roberts, Coleman Barks, Anne George, Edward Eaton, Margaret Gibson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jack Butler, R. H. W. Dillard, Jane Gentry, Rodney Jones, Dannye Romine, Miller Williams, George Garrett, Sandra Agricola, Patricia Hooper, Gerald Berrax, Gibbons Ruark, Catherine Savage Brosman, Loretta Cobb, and Pattiann Rogers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1588381315
• ISBN13: 9781588381316
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Not only a good book, a great teacher's resource

This anthology of poems is not just a good topical anthology, but as a teacher I have used it on many occasions to teach poetry. So much of 20th century has questionable themes or language where one word can disqualify a poem from being taught in a junior high or high school classroom. The poems in this book are well written, by recognizable poets - e.g. Wendell Berry - and are topically suitable and chronologically relevant for the classroom.

Best poetry anthology since Billy Collins' Poetry 180!

This book arrived on my desk just as the depression (over having finished Billy Collin's wonderful anthology, Poetry 180)set in. This was the perfect antidote. The editor has included some of my favorite contemporaries (Naomi Shihab Nye!) as well as a host of classic Southern poets (Wendell Berry, Robert Penn Warren, etc.). I devoured it in two nights. If there were six stars, I'd give this one all six.