The speaker in Irene McKinney’s poems is most often alone, sitting at the side of a stream, or standing at her own chosen gravesite in the Appalachian mountains, and the meditations spoken out of this essential solitude are powerfully clear, witty, and wide-ranging in content and tone. The center sequence of poems in the Emily Dickinson persona explores and magnifies that great and enigmatic figure. The poems are firmly grounded in concern for the ways in which the elemental powers are at work in the earth and in us: on the surface of our lives, and deeper in the underworld of the coalmines. In McKinney’s poems, the human world is never seen as separate from the natural one.

Six O'Clock Mine Report (Pitt Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

MCKINNEY, IRENE

Poetry

University of Pittsburgh Press

The speaker in Irene McKinney’s poems is most often alone, sitting at the side of a stream, or standing at her own chosen gravesite in the Appalachian mountains, and the meditations spoken out of this essential solitude are powerfully clear, witty, and wide-ranging in content and tone. The center sequence of poems in the Emily Dickinson persona explore and magnify that great and enigmatic figure. McKinney’s poems are firmly grounded in concern for the ways in which the elemental powers are at work in the Earth and in us: on the surface of our lives, and deeper in the underworld of the coal mines. In these poems, the human world is never seen separate from the natural one.

Six O'Clock Mine Report

Carnegie-Mellon University Press

The Girl With the Stone In Her Lap

North Atlantic Books

BACKCOUNTRY: CONTEMPORARY WRITING IN WEST VIRGINIA

This is as closely-knit an anthology as you are ever likely to see. It is as though a large, extended family were drawing on the same store of family stories, jokes, symbols, landscapes, animals, trees, language, and vernacular. How many snakes are in this book? How many foxes, possums? Fossils? And how very many coal mines? But it is not merely local references that unites these writers. There is a larger vision that ties these works together."The connection is not so much in mutual influence, though there is some of that, but in each writer’s total immersion in place. Even those writers who no longer live in the state remember the feel, the physical texture, the overwhelming and enfolding vegetal surround of the place." Editor, Irene McKinney

United States

Vandalia Press

This is as closely-knit an anthology as you are ever likely to see. It is as though a large, extended family were drawing on the same store of family stories, jokes, symbols, landscapes, animals, trees, language, and vernacular. How many snakes are in this book? How many foxes, possums? Fossils? And how very many coal mines? But it is not merely local references that unites these writers. There is a larger vision that ties these works together.
"The connection is not so much in mutual influence, though there is some of that, but in each writer’s total immersion in place. Even those writers who no longer live in the state remember the feel, the physical texture, the overwhelming and enfolding vegetal surround of the place." Editor, Irene McKinney

This fifth collection of poetry from West Virginia's poet laureate and author of Six O'Clock Mine Report is an extraordinary set of poems which reflects the complexity, the magnanimity, and the resilience of the human spirit. McKinney writes with candor, precision, and compassion; most importantly, though, her poems are accessible to all types of readers.

VIVID COMPANION

Irene McKinney's work of three decades is represented here. Her language is direct, vernacular, forceful, and unmistakable. These poems are directed to a listener, not overheard, in a tone and with a stance of honest intimacy. These poems occur in the rhythm of speech, not of written discourse. From the beginning, McKinney has been aware of the modulations of the spoken voice, and much of the power of these poems derives from that awareness. Her themes are the ancient ones: connections with the land, with animals, with other people, with loss, with joy. Her work should be seen in the context of such poets as Denise Levertov, Wislawa Symborska, or Ruth Stone, who worked in a tradition of independent spirit powered by clarity, compassion, and a willingness to take unpopular stances. These poems are rooted in a consciousness that draws on a wide range of poetic and spiritual traditions, but there is a remarkable consistence of concerns over these three decades.

Unthinkable: Selected Poems 1976-2004

History & Criticism

Red Hen Press

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Books by MCKINNEY, IRENE

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MCKINNEY, IRENE. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Six O'Clock Mine Report (Pitt Poetry Series)

Six O'Clock Mine Report

The Girl With the Stone In Her Lap

BACKCOUNTRY: CONTEMPORARY WRITING IN WEST VIRGINIA

BACKCOUNTRY: CONTEMPORARY WRITING IN WEST VIRGINIA

VIVID COMPANION

Unthinkable: Selected Poems 1976-2004