A visit to the shooting range reverses societal power structures, if only for a moment.

Frank Stanford wrote an American South that embraced contradiction and celebrated the marginalized. Historian James McWilliams dives into the legacy of the South’s Walt Whitman.

From Kentucky, an incantatory, lyrical roll call of defiance, affirmation, and love.

From Magic City, a lyric cry of solidarity against shame and silence.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Affrilachia, the landmark first collection of poems from former Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X Walker. From that book came this poem, Walker’s meditation on John Newton, the former slave-ship captain who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace.” (With a new reading by the author.)

Some days, the best you can do is make it to 6 a.m.

Kentucky-born poet Amelia Loeffler writes from the precipice between the wild recklessness of childhood and the quiet reflection of adulthood.

Three quite personal poems explore the waning bonds of family and friendship, the ache of migration, and the bittersweet taste of memory.

Between the pull of home, bodies of water, and the weight of memory, these two poems cast and retrieve.

More than a century ago, in “The Second Coming,” Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote, “the centre cannot hold.” But sometimes it does. This poem says so.

Ackerman’s verses—rich in the landscapes of the Blue Ridge—bridge our generations, from a rickety shelf stacked with jelly jars to climate-anxious meadows.

This finalist for the New Poets Prize—also poet laureate for Hattiesburg, Mississippi—takes us on intricate tours of Saturday in a small town, the thin line between redemption and judgment, and how beauty and love unfold in everyday moments.