Axe, Fire, Mule

The collection contains fifty-one poems divided into five sections, each (except the truncated last) containing eleven poems. The first section, Ozark Dark, introduces the rocky landscape and heavy mud of the Ozarks, the coyotes, bobcats, and deep poverty with which farm families cope. In the second section, Marooned, Albin sketches moments in the lives of people born into Ozark ways--ways which they accept and sometimes celebrate. At a family reunion, for example, “work-worn men” who’ve sp...