Customer Reviews

The Logan Topographies

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Received book in excellent brand new condition; satisfied with content; very good purchase; will use book for students in my classes.

The cover, the layout, the titles, the text, and all of their ratios to white space.. all of it gives you the impression of somebody holding back, of somebody choosing clean minimalism over gushing, graphic torrents. But unlike other books that look and feel this way, Alena Hairston's map is starkly composed to force you to pause and get lost in its rich subtext. The Father. The Mother. The Daughters. Up on the hill. On the Mountain. And on the bottom. The Logan Topographies are four battles of attrition that will have you lost into the space between the words like music notes, slowly but surely you'll find your way somewhere you didn't know you would ever be.

Written by English professor Alena Hairston, The Logan Topographies is a poetry collection set in the coal-mining town of Logan, West Virginia. The Logan Topographies speaks especially for generations of African American miners and their kin, chronicling their work ethic, their destitution, their heartbreak, and their indomitable spirit. At times affecting free verse, and at other times delving into stream-of-consciousness style, The Logan Typographies is an evocative glimpse into dedicated lives and the cultural fabric of hardworking people. "Despair is a thing of time, a commodity of idleness or wealth. If there is room / for it here, then it is not known by its name. Life lives on any track: its taking / willed, its giving silent. Bottomers do not always look up, for what is up / has already been down, is bottom-up."