Appalachian Ghost Floating Down Your Hall is a collection of poems by the late West Virginia author/teacher/plant enthusiast Rachel Hicks. Influenced by the author's upbringing in Appalachia and knack for finding bits of beauty in the everyday, Appalachian Ghost Floating Down Your Hall is sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking. Within the pages, Hicks speaks of life, death, and everything in between-- from the beauty of the land and the damage to it, to childhood, nostalgia, and flights of fancy.
Praise for Appalachian Ghost Floating Down Your Hall
Rachel Hicks' Appalachian Ghost Floating Down Your Hall is the best kind of book: a truly haunted one. Heraclitus said that we are all dying in our lives and living in our deaths. In these poems, Hicks is doing just that. She has taken the old things and made them shiny again. And she has allowed us to see them through her eyes.
-- Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book and Crapalachia
What a gift to hold this stunning collection of poems by Rachel Hicks. To witness her keen attention and love-- given over to every singing bird, the moss, the junkyard graveyard, Ms. Appalachia and the always rising mountainside. In the hands of Rachel Hicks, these poems are praises, hymns, shout-outs to the "kings of the forest" and the "chicken legs" -- each image creating a robust hallelujah of words. A gathering of those loved and those left behind. These poems read like a gospel for the unseen-- a testament to a life spent paying close attention - loving deeply. In these poems, there is continued life -- a forever holding of the world. What profound luck to know this poet and her stunning, aching love for the world around her.
--Ellen Hagan, author of Watch Us Rise, Crowned, and Hemisphere
About the Author
Rachel A. Hicks was a native of West Virginia. Her love of books, poetry, and creative writing led her to earn her MFA in poetry from West Virginia Wesleyan College. She also earned her MA in English from Marshall University. Rachel enjoyed old typewriters, even older books, children's fairy tales, and working in a local bookstore. Her work has appeared in Feminine Rising, The Pikeville Review, and Still: The Journal. Appalachian Ghost Floating Down Your Hall is her first published collection.
