Descent

Navigating the dangerous currents of family and race, Kathryn Stripling Byer's sixth poetry collection confronts the legacy of southern memory, where too often "e;it's safer to stay blind."e;Beginning with "e;Morning Train,"e; a response to Georgia blues musician Precious Bryant, Byer sings her way through a search for identity, recalling the hardscrabble lives of her family in the sequence "e;Drought Days,"e; and facing her inheritance as a white southern woman growing up amid racial division and violence. The poet encounters her own naive complicity in southern racism and challenges the narrative of her homeland, the "e;Gone with the Wind"e; mythology that still haunts the region.Ultimately, Descent creates a fragile reconciliation between past and present, calling over and over again to celebrate being, as in the book's closing manifesto, "e;Here. Where I am."e;