Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Jane Marcellus

Like Walking into a Poem

Standing along the fragile edge

In Slow Fuse of the Possible, poet Kate Daniels takes readers inside her harrowing experience as an analysand, exploring how poetry and psychoanalysis come from the same psychic place. Kate Daniels will read from her work at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on February 3.

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Little Lost Girl

I hadn’t yet learned what being lost feels like

Sometimes during my wanderings, I would hear an announcement over the public address system for a child who had been lost. The microphone would crackle, then I’d hear “We have a little lost girl,” followed by her name and a description. The announcements seemed plaintive, urgent, important.

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Always a Circling Back

Jesse Graves’ Said-Songs explores the mysteries of poetry and place

East Tennessee poet Jesse Graves’ Said-Songs, a collection of essays, reviews, and interviews, evokes the author’s rural childhood to engage with the poetry of Appalachia, roots music, and the varied meanings of place.

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A Light on in the Mica Windows

Joy Harjo’s Poet Warrior illuminates her journey with words

Blending poetry and prose, Joy Harjo’s second memoir, Poet Warrior, braids her story of becoming an accomplished poet and modern Native woman — always guided by her ancestors in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation — into the larger context of Native history.

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More Than a Footnote

Kim Ruehl explores the life of activist Zilphia Horton in A Singing Army

In A Singing Army: Zilphia Horton and the Highlander Folk School, Kim Ruehl makes a spirited, independent woman central to the story of the legendary training center for labor and civil rights activists.

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A Modern Mother’s Surprising Secret

In The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames, a daughter confronts her mother’s Dickensian childhood

Growing up, Justine Cowan struggled with her demanding, ambitious mother, Eileen, a talented pianist who claimed noble Welsh ancestry. In her memoir, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames, Cowan explores the grim truth of her mother’s origins and comes to understand their fraught relationship.

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