The Letting Go by Bill King

Bill King teaches English at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia.  His doctorate is from the University of Georgia. After publishing many individual poems, Bill King has created his first collection. It is attractively packaged with a gorgeous cover photo of art work by Lisbet Okun. These important and compelling poems never stray far from the phenomena of the natural world while connecting nature’s ways to hospitalization, to teaching, to family, and beyond. West Virginia’s poet laureate, Marc Harshman, avers, “In this book I am continually struck by King's remarkable attention to detail: ‘the barbed wire / that stitched the hem / of old man Warner's field...’ or a robin that ‘runs upright like a butler, / then bends, as if bowing...’ Such wonderful imagery is harnessed not only to reveal the natural world, however, but the ins and outs of raising children, the challenges of illness, and what it means to bear witness to tragedy. There are, for instance, powerful poems