Long Alabama Summer by Katherine Perry

I have followed Katherine Perry’s poetry since 2011, watched her work grow in power and confidence over the years.  LONG ALABAMA SUMMER demonstrates her ability to write strong and sensual poems that are rich in the specifics of her Southern environment but relatable for many readers, especially women. She is not afraid to deal in fine poems with the contradictions and constrictions of racism.

–Marge Piercy

Katherine D. Perry introduces her debut collection of poems by telling readers about her first literary love: Sylvia Plath. And Plath indeed haunts the material of Perry’s work throughout, not only in the sincerity and forthright honesty of the poems but in the very fabric of the poems’ construction, music, and eloquence. These are poems that make the reader ache, that pull at the threads of who we are and who we were and the memories that make us. Perry’s work incorporates bold and courageous subject matter inside a quiet rhythmic beauty that stands apart from a good deal of the contemporary work being published today, which all-too-often uses syntactical experimentation and showmanship at the cost of truly connecting to the reader. You will read these poems and you will want more of Perry’s work. And you will want to know Katherine D. Perry, the author of such beauty, such raw honesty, such forthright talent borne of memory and experience. Perry is the real McCoy. I hope this will be the first of many books to come.

–Andrea Witzke Slot, author of To Find a New Beauty