The Upstate

**Poetry that sings of southern Appalachian beauty and crisis.** Set in a landscape of red sunsets and wildfire smoke, Queen Anne’s lace on the roadsides, and toxic chemicals in the watershed, Lindsay Turner’s __The Upstate__ is a book about southern Appalachia in a contemporary moment of change and development. Layering a personal lyric voice with a broader awareness of labor issues and political and ecological crises, __The Upstate__ redefines a regional poetics as one attuned to national and global systems. These poems observe and emote, mourning acts of devastation and raging in their own quiet way against their continuation. The poems in __The Upstate__ arise from moments of darkness and desperation, mobilizing a critical intelligence against the status quo of place and history, all while fiercely upholding belief in the role of poetry to affect these conditions. Turner’s poems weave spells around beloved places and people, yearning to shield them from destruction and to profess faith in the delicate beauties of the world at hand. Contents Planning Part I The Upstate The Upstate Overlook Accomplice Forms of Displeasure The Upstate Tennessee Quatrains New City Song of Accumulation Part II Spells & Charms Premonition Pretty Like That The Upstate Charm for J Charm for W Charm for the Neighborhood Charm for G It Imagines the Destruction It Wants Vows Superstition Part III The Compass Tender Publics Accomplice (Isabella from Measure for Measure) Just Work Wasted Empty Space Part IV It’s the Stupidest Thing Dogwood A Bad Spring Vacation Song Poem Song of Untellable Distances The Capitals Accomplice Acknowledgments