Book description
What Comes Down To Us features twenty-five of Kentucky's most
accomplished contemporary poets. Together they serve to illustrate the
diversity and richness of poetry being written today in the
Commonwealth. The poems were collected by Jeff Worley, a poet who has
lived in Kentucky for more than two decades. Although the subject
matter of the poems transcends the state's borders, the collection
communicates a strong sense of Kentucky as a place. Worley's
introduction places contemporary Kentucky poetry in the context of the
state's rich literary tradition, and the poet biographies include
their reflections and, often, their poetic approach and technique.
"Kentucky poets love their commonwealth, its natural beauty,
its complex and troubled history, its family stories, as well as the
strangeness that runs through all of them like a river. What Comes
Down to Us: 25 Contemporary Kentucky Poets brings together a range of
poets, from Wendell Berry to Davis McCombs, to give us a regional
treat that is, in truth, a national treasure."--Andrew Hudgins,
author of After the Last War: A Narrative and Ecstatic in the Poison:
New Poems" --
Jeff Worley is the author of three collections of poetry including
The Only Time There Is, which won the Mid-List Press first-book
competition in 1995, A Simple Human Motion, and Happy Hour at the Two
Keys Tavern, which was named 2006 Kentucky Book of the Year in poetry.
His poems have been published widely, and he won the Atlanta Review
2002 grand prize for the poem, "His Funeral." Worley has
served as editor of Odyssey magazine since 1997.
