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NEW   Plainspeak: New & Selected Poems

For many years, I have regarded the literary voice of Dixon Hearne as one of the most distinguished voices of the American South. After reading Plainspeak: New and Selected Poems, however, I quickly realized that his poetic voice is equally effective in capturing the very essence of the American West: its native peoples, flora, fauna, and starkly beautiful landscapes. In this remarkable collection of poetry, Hearne writes of the Apache, Crow, Lakota, Anasazi, Caddo, and the "crying voices" of the Choctaw on the Trail of Tears. He writes of the wind whispering through the skulls of countless buffalo slaughtered almost to extinction. If the vast landscapes of the West could speak, they would do so in a spare, highly skilled, and powerfully evocative voice like Hearne's.
Larry D. Thomas, Member, Texas Institute of Letters, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate
 

Dixon Hearne can gaze at a barren southern or southwestern landscape and sense the presence of those who lived there in the past, human and animal spirits alike. In these life-affirming poems, he reminds us of our sacred duty to be “keepers of Mother Earth, not despoilers of it.
Julie Kane, 2011-2013 Louisiana Poet Laureate

  

It’s truly rare to find a poet equally adept at illuminating both physical and emotional topographies. Poem after poem, Dixon Hearne’s Plainsong: New and Selected Poems unearths truths of human life and of American landscape in a journey from lush Appalachia, through the wetlands of Louisiana, and into the native life of the American west. His lines pop with the rattle of a snake’s tail and flow like tufted clouds across blue skies. Whether describing a bighorn clash or the sadness of a lonely rainfall, Hearne’s is an art driven by passion, clarity, and respect for what makes us human.
Jack B. Bedell, author of Elliptic and Bone-Hollow, True: New & Selected Poems

  

Plainspeak is vintage Dixon Hearne. He is a landscape painter whose palate is poetry, and his subject is Mother Earth from her swamplands and bayous and the majestic Mississippi to the canyons and deserts of her west. His poems reverence the Earth's "ancient seedlings" and the heavens above in their "pastel tiers" but they also explore the "tableau of seasons" where we see how change--natural and human--has influenced her and us along with it. Among the "chards of history" that Hearne uncovers are elegiac reminders of disappearing tribes and roads. But above and through it all, Hearne assures us there are places still "haunted with beauty." Emerson and Whitman both would enjoy Hearne's paintings.
Philip C. Kolin, co-editor of Down to the Dark River, Univ. Distinguished Prof. (Emeritus)

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Amphorae Publishing Group proudly presents

Delta Flats: Stories In The Key Of Blues And Hope

From the piney hills of northern Louisiana to the raw and decadent streets of New Orleans, Delta Flats: Stories in the Key of Blues and Hope records the daily lives of its characters with a poetic rhythm that evokes the ebb and flow of life itself. Dixon Hearne is a master at capturing the “blue reality” of life, moments―both large and small―that define the hot days and long nights of the deep south. With language as gritty as the blues and as beautiful as a gospel choir, he juxtaposes the downtrodden with the hopeful and the darkness with the light and plays out each story with deft, lyrical descriptions that make the reader want to laugh and sing with joy. 

 

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Read Review: Clarion Ledger

Southeast Missouri State University Press proudly presents
A new comic novella - From Tickfaw to Shongaloo

   
Sole Runner-up in the 2014 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition, judged by Moira Crone, and has placed on John Dufresne's Recommended Reading List. From Tickfaw to Shongaloo is now available from Southeast Missouri State University Press and other book sellers. Also available at Amazon.com.

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From Tickfaw to Shongaloo is a comic Southern tale told in the first person by Raylene, a local gossip in little Stokely, Louisiana. Bert Dilly the postmaster (we learn, has been spreading town gossip like everyone else), fueled by his habit of being a little too involved with the local mail (opened or not). A disgruntled maiden lady writes a scathing letter of complaint, which is reported to the stat postmaster, and Bert’s brother, J.T., accuses Bert of mental incompetence (he wants the family land). Bert is replaced until the charges can be taken up by a federal court in Baton Rouge.

          Most of the town rallies around Bert, but the hearing devolves into a kangaroo court, turning citizens against each other, egged on by a crooked lawyer who crumbles when the whole matter blows up in his face, through his own arrogance and igorance of certain facts (crazy as they were). After three days of ridiculous testimony and unreliable evidence, the judge must make his landmark decision about Bert, the mail, and gossip in Stokely, Louisiana—where the townsfolk can hardly wait to exchange their own versions of honest truth.

      

Dixon Hearne has taken up the estimable mantle of Southern comic writers that stretches back to George Washington Harris and Mark Twain. Digressions are the sunshine of this hilarious novella, and you’ll be reminded of Eudora Welty and Laurence Sterne. I haven’t laughed so hard since A Confederacy of Dunces.
John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power and Light and No Regrets, Coyote

 
      Dixon Hearne gives us From Tickfaw to Shongaloo and a narrator who lets loose memorable torrent of small town gossip and innuendo that will make your head spin.
Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life and Going Away Shoes

 
      With From Tickfaw to Shongaloo, Dixon Hearne presents a literary farce sung to us in a hilarious, yet authentic, voice. There are eccentric characters by the bus-full in this novella, and that makes for one wild and sidesplitting ride.
Skip Horack, author of The Other Joseph, The Eden Hunter, and The Southern Cross

 
      His novella has enough eccentrics to start five freak shows, a very nosy postmaster, a town that rallies to defend their crazies, and three days of testimony in a Baton Rouge courthouse meant to keep everybody in one small town in everyone else’s business until the end of time. Good writing and quirky characters.
Moira Crone, author of The Not Yet, What Gets into Us and The Ice Garden

     

       

    

Dixon Hearne teaches and writes in the American South. Much of his writing draws greatly from the rich images in his daily life growing up along the graceful river traces and bayous in West Monroe, Louisiana. After many years of university teaching and writing for research journals, his interests turned toward fiction and poetry—and the challenge of writing in a different voice.

He is the author of several recent books, including Native Voices, Native Lands and Plantatia: High-toned and Lowdown Stories of the South—nominee for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award and winner of the Creative Spirit Award-Platinum for best general fiction book. His work has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has received numerous other honors. He is editor of several recent anthologies, including A Quilt of Holidays. His work can be found widely in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including  Oxford American, New Orleans Review, Louisiana Literature, Big Muddy, Cream City Review, Wisconsin Review, Post Road, New Plains Review, Weber-Contemporary West, Mature Living, Woodstock Revisited, The Southern Poetry Anthology: Louisiana, and elsewhere.

He has a new novella forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State University Press and is currently at work on new short story and poetry collections—as well as a series of interviews with American writers. He is a frequent presenter and an invited speaker at the Louisiana Book Festival and other events.

 

Contact Dixon Hearne at jdixonhearne@gmail.com

      

Interviews:

●  Louisiana Anthology Podcast

●  Mississippi Authors

●  Daily Pilot

   ●  Cover to Cover

 The News-Star

  Fleur de Lit

●  Belle Reve Literary Journal

   ●  Writers and Authors

●  Twelve Minute Muse

●  Fiction Writers Review The Penmen Review
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