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Seasons on the Ridge by Evelyn McAmis Bales

Name: Seasons on the Ridge by Evelyn McAmis Bales
SKU: 188089
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Original price was: $17.99.Current price is: $15.99.

The voice of Evelyn Bales sings through time, caught in the pages of her new collection, Seasons on the Ridge. From the opening poem, “Morning Drive,” with its snowy egret that rises, “spreads [her wings] full in adulation,” to the closing poem, “Autumn Comes,” with the “falling leaves crazy quilting across the yard,” Bales’ words capture the reader with their praise of nature and of the gift of life, and with gratitude for that gift. The poems include light moments—a raccoon “shuffling home / … wasted / from his nightly carousing”—as well as formal sonnets and echoes of long-loved poetic voices, as in “A Poem for this Day” with its nod to Yeats’ “time goes passing slow here.” Time is well spent here among the delights of Bales’ world.

–Connie Jordan Green, author of Household Inventory (winner of the Brick Road Poetry Prize), Darwin’s Breath (Iris Press), and Nameless as the Minnows (Madville Publishing)

In Seasons on the Ridge, Poet Evelyn Bales shows us that reassessment and recalibration and grace is needed by everyone as we begin life’s final laps. Vivid descriptions of her beautiful East Tennessee home intersperse with the loving memories of her late husband, and readers are reminded that some are lucky enough to survive the loss of a great lifelong love story with keen eye, generous spirit, loving heart, and peaceful mind. Though he is missing, hope still remains, “hanging blue and hazy on the wind.”

These poems take us to the stars, planets, to the moon, to water, to caves and underground tunnels and to the animals that traffic them, to woods brimming with wildlife, but always Bales brings us back to hearth and home, where the warm fire of love burned. “Happiness” Bales writes “lies in learning to love what you have to do.” These poems illustrate that precept, where the poet doesn’t just endure, but lives fully and creatively despite profound loss—by focusing on Beauty and Love.

–Rita Quillen is the author of Some Notes You Hold, Madville Press and The Mad Farmer’s Wife, Texas Review Press

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Seasons on the Ridge

by Evelyn McAmis Bales

Paper

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This title will be released on August 21 , 2026

At its heart, Seasons on the Ridge is a celebration of a place permeated with nature, the poet’s sense of loss, spirituality, and a sense of the passage of time. The writer invites the reader into her world to sense the mystery and consolation nature provides. She has a deep love for nature especially native trees, the heavens, and the place where she lives. The early mornings around Christmas time she calls holy where even the birds raise their wings in worship. She celebrates the Ridge and the life she has lived there with her late husband and their children for over fifty years and pays homage to its trees, plants, animals along with Appalachian folklore. In the words of an early reader, “ an autobiography of poetry so tender and tranquil you can envision the poet skipping through time into the afterlife full of love for her beloved and their place.” #poetry #nature #loss #fleetingtime #home #gratitude

Evelyn McAmis Bales grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee, in a home that was later taken to build Interstate 26. Many of her childhood places are quite literally buried beneath that highway. She has been published in Appalachian Review, Kudzu, Bloodroot, Anthology of Appalachian Poets and Writers, Southern Poetry Anthology, Tennessee Edition, as well as other journals and anthologies throughout the Appalachian region and beyond. Two of her poems were performed by the West Palm Beach Repertory Company in Tapestry: The Voices of Women Poets. Her chapbook Kinkeeper was published by Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio. She has three adult children and three grandchildren. Her beloved husband of 57 years passed away in 2020. She has owned Labrador Retrievers for more than 50 years.

They are the black dogs who often find themselves in her poems.