Lynnell Edwards

Lynnell Major Edwards is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, The Farmer's Daughter (2003), The Highwayman's Wife (2007), and Covet (2011) all from Red Hen Press. Most recently her chapbook Kings of the Rock and Roll Hot Shop was released by Accents Publishing (2014). Her work has appeared on Verse Daily and in numerous literary journals, including Poems & Plays, Southern Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, The Los Angeles Review, Kestrel, and River Styx. She is a regular reviewer for Pleiades, Rain Taxi, and American Book Review and her short fiction has been published in literary journals such as New Madrid and the Connecticut Review. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she is Associate Professor of English at Spalding University. She received her doctorate in English at the University of Louisville, her undergraduate degree at Centre College in Kentucky, and is the recipient of a 2007 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She is also associate director of Louisville Literary Arts. a non-profit literary arts organization which sponsors the monthly InKY reading series in Louisville, Ky and The Writer's Block Festival.


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Covet

Lynnell Edwards

Publication Date: October 1, 2011

$16.95 Tradepaper

ISBN: 978-1-59709-171-8

Description:

“Lynnell Edwards’s third poetry collection, Covet, is a fascinating wide-ranging examination of desire. From the small and antique—a “Tinderbox Chamberstick w/Flint and Cover,” say, to the middle distance of “Available Light” and everyday life, to the wild freedom of turkey vultures “soaring / each spring over Pine Mountain,” her poems are witty, lyrical, commonsensical, and marvelously bold. This is a book worth coveting.”— Kelly Cherry


“Great beauty, these poems understand, often steals in unexpectedly—the bird through the window, the forsythia that erupts out of a wintry landscape. Again and again we encounter here “the breath of the ecstatic”, hearts “filled to bursting” “rush[ing] and skip[ping],” “thumping in [their] box[es].” Edwards knows how quickly the visions she seeks to capture fade to “ordinary pain.” The trick—one these lovely poems manage over and over—is to be the camera “shutter’s click and whir, imperceptible / as hummingbird’s wings.” I finished these poems grateful for their acts of thievery, their coveting. What a beautiful and accomplished book.”— Davis McCombs

White text stating The Highwayman's Wife poems by Lynnell Edwards over a dark red background with the centered black and white image of a woman sitting in the drivers seat of a car with the door open.
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The Highwayman’s Wife

Lynnell Edwards

Publication Date: February 15, 2007

$17.95 Tradepaper

ISBN: 978-1597090759

Description:

With The Highwayman’s Wife, Lynnell Edwards’ fierce and brazen poems breathe new life into well-known myths and tales, giving a new, bold voice to characters such as Medusa and Helen of Troy. Equal parts graceful and audacious, Edwards’ poems capture her genuine love of language while maintaining a charming style all their own.

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The Farmer’s Daughter

Lynnell Edwards

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

$11.95 Tradepaper

ISBN: 978-1888996746

Description:

As a writer of drama and short fiction, Edwards’ first collection of poetry is influenced by the character sketches of her earlier prose works, while maintaining a strong sense of lyricism. Like her influences, Sharon Olds, Rainer Rilke, and Sylvia Plath, Edwards’ poetry derives force from its candor and observational simplicity. A Kentucky native, Edwards continues in the tradition of great pastoral voices such as Robert Frost, drawing from his metaphorical, lyric and structural paradigms. Reading The Farmer’s Daughter evokes fields of space, filled with light and soft shadows.

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