Topsoil Road: Poems

Published by: Louisiana State University Press (Paperback 2000)
Topsoil Road at LSU Press
Topsoil Road at Bookshop.org
Topsoil Road at Amazon

Published by: Louisiana State University Press (Hardcover 2000)
Topsoil Road at LSU Press
Topsoil Road at Amazon

Included poems:

Attakullakulla Goes to London

Signal Fires

Topsoil Road

Girdling

Thrush Doctor

Fever Wit

Wild Peavines

Sanghoe

Outbuildings

Blowing Rock

Squatting

The Blue Hole

Care

Working in the Rain

Mowing

Atomic Age

Heat Lightning

June Bug

Oranges

Vapor Salve

Besom

Companions

Polishing the Silver

Family Bible

Translumination

Hearth

Sharpening a Saw

Wind from a Waterfall

Chicken Scratches

Convection

Heel Taps

Blizzard

Fulgurite

Wind Rider

Music of the Spheres

Snake Fence

Harvest Sink

Crow String

Manifest

Bread

Amber

Oxbow Lakes

History's Madrigal

Tail Music

Mountain Dulcimer

The Grain of Sound

Madstone

Honey

Related media:

Wild Peavines (poem)

History's Madrigal (poem)

The Grain of Sound (poem)

Honey (poem)

Praise for Topsoil Road: Poems:

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.

— Poetry

. . .

It is such a pleasure to rest on the fertile banks of [Morgan's] imagination, engaged by a steady current of haunting images and carefully chiseled phrases, that when the final poems comes, the reader feels as if the power company dammed the Green River without putting it to a vote.

— Southern Humanities Review

. . .

The poet laureate of Appalachia.

— Kirkus Review

. . .

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