Light at the Seam

Set in the coal country of southern Appalachia, Joseph Bathanti's Light at the Seam depicts the scourge and predations of mountaintop removal, capturing not only its ruthless, mammon-driven eradication of entire landscapes, but also its attempt to eviscerate memory and displace inhabitants. At the core of this meditative volume lies the deep, soulful spirits evident in those landscapes: the fearless working-class kindred, their abiding, fierce hold on home and hearth, and the cherished, ancient land upon which they have toiled, birthed, loved, worshipped, and died for generations. Bathanti's poems move parabolically from the subterranean realms of coal miners and the dwindling, though breathtaking, natural world they chip at-habitually compromised and devastated by the toxic fallout of mountaintop removal-into the redemptive altitude of ultimate deliverance. Light at the Seam is a praise song that illuminates and champions people residing, in a precarious moment in time, on the glorious, yet besieged, Appalachian earth--