At Home in the Mountains: Poems

Accepting this invitation of Ken Slone into the world embodied in his poetry, the reader finds himself in a place that encompasses the soul of Appalachia. These opening lines from the first poem in the collection, At Home in the Mountains, introduce us to a world that gratifies the senses, the emotions, and the spirit. The sense of place, of time and family are so strong that one feels an immediate kinship with the writer, and hears his own heart answer: "Yes. This is what I know and feel about my home." A native of Johnson County, Slone grew up in the east Kentucky mountains near Paintsville, Kentucky, and from earliest childhood began to absorb the essences of the region that would later be distilled in his poetry. The poems in this book take the reader to a homeplace where family and friends are of greatest importance, and where the unbroken continuum of life and death is a cause for joy. –– excerpt from the Introduction by Laura Weddle