Berry, Wendell. Openings. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace & Company,1968.
In Openings Wendell Berry speaks as a citizen, farmer, husband, and father and as a man deeply concerned about the state of the nation. He writes both to celebrate the natural world and to warn of the destruction we inflict on it. He writes about our responsibilities to ourselves and to one another and about America's misuses of power. He writes, in poems that are tender and passionate, of love for his wife and of the pleasures and anxieties of parenthood. In a highly acclaimed extended sequence entitled Window Poems he weaves together all of his dominant themes.

hooks, bell. Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2012.
Author, activist, feminist, teacher, and artist bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks drew her unique pseudonym from the name of her grandmother, an intelligent and strong-willed African American woman who inspired her to stand up against a dominating and repressive society. Her poetry, novels, memoirs, and children's books reflect her Appalachian upbringing and feature her struggles with racially integrated schools and unwelcome authority figures. One of Utne Reader's "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life," hooks has won wide acclaim from critics and readers alike.

Manning, Maurice. One Man's Dark. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2017.
One Man’s Dark, the sixth collection from Pulitzer finalist Maurice Manning, epitomizes the storytelling tradition of his native rural South in poems rich with mythology and lyric beauty. In vivid detail that draws as readily from dreams as from waking life, Manning honors what is rapidly vanishing: the people, landscapes, and things of a world making way for an uncertain and less spiritual future. Like songs sung from a warm porch, these revelatory poems chronicle not only the narratives that have gathered and bound a community over time but also the lyrics that have questioned it, too, in gorgeously intimate and personal terms.

Walker, Frank X. Affrilachia. Lexington, KY: Old Cove Press, 2000.
Frank X Walker’s path breaking book of poems Affrilachia is a classic of Appalachian and African-American literature. Walker created the word “Affrilachia” to help make visible the experience of African-Americans living in the rural and Appalachian South. The book is widely used in classrooms and is one of the foundational works of the Affrilachian Poets, a community of writers offering fresh ways to think about diversity in the Appalachian region and beyond.

Whiteley, Opal. The Story of Opal. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920.
Gary Crase, a former photography student featured in Portraits and Dreams, recalls his encounter with The Story of Opal - Whiteley’s curious childhood diary. Crase says to Ewald, “One time you brought a book in. And it was a poem. And I had never heard poetry before. And I can remember you reading this poetry and being utterly amazed.”