And All the Layered Light

Writes Wade Hall, from his introduction: Using the settings and imagery of his native rural Kentucky, Charles Semones creates in this new collection of his poems a world of longing and desire, of passion and pursuit, of rapture and depression. In his reclusive, gospel-drenched, haunted world of draped mirrors and desperate dog days of summer, the poet-lover moves along his lonely route seeking and hoping for at least a brief respite from the Gothic horrors, internal and external, that curse his journey. Semones's own autobiographical travels and travails, which he has translated into a universal poetry of the soul, will resonate deeply with anyone who thinks deeply about the human condition. This is Southern Gothic writing at its finest.