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These I Would Keep NewSouth Books This little volume, collected and edited by beloved author Helen Blackshear, features the work of nine writers who have served as poet laureates of Alabama, including that of Blackshear herself and of acclaimed writer and former poet laureate Helen Norris. This collection also preserves in one place the poems of the rest of the laureates, some of Alabama’s finest and dearest poets: Dr. Samuel Minturn Peck, Bert Henderson, Mary B. Ward, Carl P. Morton, Ralph Hammond, Morton D. Prouty, Jr., and William Young Elliott. “Poetry speaks in many tongues,” writes Carl Morton in one poem included in this volume. These I Would Keep generously captures them all.
Reviews “No literary history of Alabama would be complete without a gathering of its poet laureates. These I Would Keep truly is a keepsake, both for future generations and contemporary readers who will delight in the verse of friends present and past. Who has not mourned the Holocaust, dreamed of elves, listened to the voice of wind, rain, or grass, or tracked the morning star? The virtue of these very different poets, and of Helen Blackshear’s well-chosen selections from their work, is that all of them uphold the laureate’s way of taking the reader into the circle of poetry, by making poetry the circle of common humanity.” “This is an important book, one to be treasured. In These I Would Keep, through the poems of Alabama’s poet laureates, we are reminded of the rich literary heritage we are blessed with in our state.” “A rich legacy of some of Alabama’s most beloved poets.” “They, these Alabama poet laureates, do not write of headline events. They write of curling creeks, a grapevine swing, the smell of hardware stores, the legacy of Indian names, bird feeders, cutting wood for winter, deserted houses, simple themes reflecting their love of their native state.”
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