Copperhead

by Rachel Richardson

These sinewy, sensuous poems lead down dusty Louisiana backroads, where anything might be lurking: family secrets, rusted relics, a viper. In Copperhead, her debut collection, Rachel Richardson pays homage to the folklore and myth of an Old South that is rapidly disappearing. Riffing from Leadbelly to road signs to the Lucky Lady Lounge, from Britney Spears to broken levees to the first white woman executed in the state, Richardson weaves a rich and conflicted portrait of a place continually haunted by its past. These are poems-as-documentary, an accounting of a region's history and future politically charged, environmentally reverent, and always shot through with song."

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 2011

Reviews

[Jeff Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

By way of saying that I know the author of this carefully constructed, almost essay-like, musing on love and history and race and more, let me just say that I'm not a fan of poetry book covers that are better than the one book cover that I can currently claim. Copperhead has a great snake etching, the name and title in just the right place, the snake even curls onto the back cover. Good call, Grace LaRosa, cover designer. Plus it's a two-color cover, I think, which is what my cover was, and hands down Copperhead wins. And Ms. Richardson has another book coming out soon and I bet that one will have another great cover using only two measly ink colors. But I digress. Look, if you're interested in the American South, its history, particularly Louisiana history, then you should really pick up this debut poetry collection. You should actually do more than pick it up, you should buy it. The book establishes itself first as a kind of travelogue and then opens up into so much more: into family history, American history, and into the struggle of a lover trying to come to terms with the end of a relationship. One poem ("Field Notes") begins "My grandmother is not hurting anyone," and ends with "The tour guide is the only one who believes in the ghost." Now don't you want to find out what happens between those two evocative bookends? I could really go on and on about the magic of that first line -- in the context of the book it somehow encapsulates a whole history of a region, in part because its phrasing makes us immediately ask: well, who is the grandmother hurting? And the last line is like a walk-off, throw-down-the microphone moment: authenticity, native and other, it's all there in one brief bullet of a sentence.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some gorgeous moments in here. And if I were to teach a class on poetry & place, I would add this to the syllabus in a heartbeat. There's a richness here that evokes a south I lived in but was unfamiliar with, or only vaguely so, mostly because childhood memories are brief (we moved when I was twelve) and some of this was culturally blocked from me. I certainly look forward to her next.

[molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe this is Rachel Richardson's first of many collections to come. A Louisiana native, Rachel was a professor of mine at UNC, and the whole chap book is worth buying if only for the poem about Britney Spears.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh. My... really beautiful--full of place and connection