Out of the South Book

Rooted in the red clay of middle Tennessee and in the lives of working-class people who exalt their southern heritage, the poems in OUT OF THE SOUTH look unflinchingly at the life of a poor white boy instilled with a ferocious pride and taught to be a racist. These lyric poems form a coherent narrative that begins in the segregated 1950's and follows its narrator forward into his own separated life. Self-exiled from the place of his birth for nearly a quarter-century, Bowers recalls the blotched history of the region and personal moments that implicate him in a past he wishes to disown. OUT OF THE SOUTH is both a penance for decades of silence and an affirmation of an unshakable identity.