Good Measure: Essays and Interviews on Poetry

Robert Morgan has a rare and cunning gift: he can sift through the detritus of the past, pluck objects and images from his memory (especially his childhood) and elevate them to the point where they become -- in the sense that Campbell used the word -- 'numinous.'

One of Robert Morgan's chief claims on our attention is the backbone he puts into the backcountry lore that grounds his work, the stately proprieties and meditative gravity he hews out of the hardscrabble folkways of his native Blue Ridge Mountains... His is a fine-grained, self-implicating intelligence that can span the intricacies of both pine resin and pantoums.

If you grew up in the country or feel an affinity for the mountains, Morgan's [work] will bring you home again; if not, here is an authentic tour of the region.