Getting acquainted with local flora and fauna is the perfect way to begin to understand the wonder of nature. The natural environment of Southern Appalachia, with habitats that span the Blue Ridge to the Cumberland Plateau, is one of the most biodiverse on earth. A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia-a hybrid literary and natural history anthology-showcases sixty of the many species indigenous to the region. Ecologically, culturally, and artistically, Southern Appalachia is rich in paradox and stereotype-defying complexity. Its species range from the iconic and inveterate-such as the speckled trout, pileated woodpecker, copperhead, and black bear-to the elusive and endangered-such as the American chestnut, Carolina gorge moss, chucky madtom, and lampshade spider. The anthology brings together art and science to help the reader experience this immense ecological wealth. Stunning images by seven Southern Appalachian artists and conversationally written natural history information complement contemporary poems from writers such as Ellen Bryant Voigt, Wendell Berry, Janisse Ray, Sean Hill, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Deborah A. Miranda, Ron Rash, and Mary Oliver. Their insights illuminate the wonders of the mountain South, fostering intimate connections. The guide is an invitation to get to know Appalachia in the broadest, most poetic sense.

This major international anthology provides students and the general reader with an invaluable introduction to contemporary modernist poetry. Containing over thirty poets from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and USA, this selection offers a powerful vision of late-Twentieth-century poetic achievement: international, politically- and socially-engaged, and radical in imaginative vision and practice. It celebrates risk, resistance, protest and diversity within poetry, reaching across national and cultural boundaries. Vanishing Points provides students of Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, English and American Studies, as well as the general reader, with an important survey of modernist poetry at the start of the new millennium. * A unique introduction to the wide range of modernist experiment in contemporary poetry * Ideal study aid for students of poetry and poetics * Broad, international selection of acclaimed modernist poets * Substantial contributions offer important insights into the range of each poet's work From the Introduction: The vanishing point lies beyond the horizon established by ruling conventions, it is where the imagination takes over from the understanding. Most anthologies of contemporary verse are filled with poems that do not cross that dividing-line, but our contention is that many poems in this volume are situated on the threshold of conventional sense-making. They go beyond the perspective of accepted canons of taste and judgement and ask questions about where they belong, and who they are meant for, often combining the pathos of estrangement with the irascibility of the refusenik. All anthologies enter the world fully aware of their genealogy, of where they fit in, of how they relate to certain traditions of writing by affiliation or rejection. This combination of dependent and independent gestures is inevitable, particularly in the case of selections of work aligned with national or regional versions of literary history. The present anthology does not fall into that category; its international reach does not, however, bring exemption from the dilemma of wanting to stand apart from conditions of rivalry while also needing to claim a special value in comparison with publications already available.