Marie Parsons’ newly released book Near a River Winding: Poems and Songs (Outskirts Press, September 4, 2026, $19.95, paperback) is now available and should be on the bookshelves and nightstands of poetry lovers everywhere.
A native of Pike County, Kentucky, Parsons grew up there and later became an English professor at Prestonsburg Community College. Now retired and living in Winchester, she is very much living the life of a poet and writer.
Parsons initially published a novel called The Devil’s Back in 2015, but has since turned to poetry. With her second book, Near a River Winding, readers will discover a poet who takes them on a lyrical journey from the simple to the complex.
From her poem “Let Me Be,” I share the last three stanzas:
With apologies to Dr. Seuss,
Let me reveal to you the truth:
I’ll never choose to write haiku
As so many poets do.
I’d rather eulogize a stump,
Or cuddle up with some cold lump,
Eat my supper from a can,
Or have a fling with Sam I Am.
There just is no changing me,
So, haiku lovers, let me be!
From that early poem in her collection, Parsons then treats us to her love for her native Kentucky, before her poems later in the book take us on still-lyrical journeys into complex topics that many readers might find challenging.
Indeed, as the book nears its end, poems such as “Spare Me a Dime,” “The Lights of Camelot,” “The Hungry Multitudes,” “If the World Were Mine,” and “Feather-Blind” are works that may cause one to pause and reflect. They may may even cause readers to have a change of heart, or at least consider whether what may have moved their hearts previously should change.
About a soldier’s time in Vietnam, Parsons’ “Casualties of Vietnam” has her narrator state in the first two stanzas.
When he left home, he had no doubt,
He knew what life was all about,
Thought his country did no wrong,
No place to him was quite like home.
His faith was strong,
He still believed
In honor, love, and dignity,
And Jesus died for you and me.
But just six stanzas later the narrator reveals the effects that being in Vietnam had brought about:
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Soon he questioned his beliefs,
Joints he smoked brought no relief,
He left Saigon, his body whole,
But disillusioned in his soul.
His old beliefs, a long time gone,
Casualties of Vietnam.
The world he thought he knew had changed,
Everything seemed rearranged.
Still, before we get to the final poems in this long collection of poems and songs, we learn about Parsons’ humor, wit, and a bit about the Kentucky of her youth and adulthood. In so doing, by the time we reach those poems of pain, regret, and changes of mind, we are ready to consider them.
Because we have come to trust the poet who wrote them from her heart and, for many readers, I suspect, etched them upon their hearts.
