Dragging Gunter’s Chain by Victoria Woolf Bailey

Bailey gives us all of the South, and she does so without flinching… she realizes that with the beauty of the land comes the hardships of nearly starving horses, burning tires, people suffering through drinking and drug problems and poverty, massacred chickens, and a farm where “sweet gums swallow the fields like hungry orphans.”

This is a powerful, important collection informed by the Kentucky landscape, and I admire it deeply.

–Kelly Moffett, author of A Thousand Black Wings

While she works beside him, this surveyor’s wife also scrutinizes the scarred bark of trees, the misshapen fruit of galls and the mysteries of woodpecker holes. Victoria Woolf Bailey takes us to her rural Kentucky, to hidden ravines and garage sales, to purple spikes and fragrant decay. These poems are deeply felt and ripe with image.

–E. Gail Chandler, author of Where the Red Road Meets the Sky

Trudging in the footsteps of Daniel Boone and his ilk, who surveyed Kentucky for settlement, Bailey’s poems measure a persistent wilderness. Her style is spare, her voice quiet, but these poems explore the difficulty of mapping the terra incognita of the human heart.

–Sherry Chandler, author of Weaving a New Eden

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]