Title: Anne & Alpheus, 1842-1882
First published: 1996
Description: Chosen by Rachel Hadas as the winner of the 1995 Arkansas Poetry Award, Anne & Alpheus: 1842-1882 is a compelling duet of monologues between a frontier man and woman surviving the hardships and recording the small triumphs of life in rural nineteenth-century Kentucky.

Ambitious in breadth and scope, these poems chart the loves and losses of early marriage, the terrors of civilian life during the Civil War, and the universal sorrows of aging, loneliness, and death. Through the distinct voices of Anne and Alpheus Waters, Joe Survant has fashioned a collection with all the sweep of a novel, all the dramatic intensity, poem by poem, of short fiction, and all the earthy, human lyricism of the dramatic monologue.

These poems take us into the tobacco sheds, put us behind the plow, let us smell the soil, and carry us under the stars where Anne and Alpheus walked.
Subjects: Poetry, Married people, Farm life, Poetry (poetic works by one author), History
Places: Kentucky
LC classification: PS3569.U728 A56 1996