Clinch River by Susan Hankla

The fact that this book is part of a tangled web of relationships fraught with creativity and rare distinction should be viewed as a positive.  Groundhog Poetry Press was founded in 2016 by R.H.W. Dillard not long before his 80th birthday. He is a Roanoke native who has been a mainstay of the Hollins University faculty since Lee Smith and Annie Dillard were roommates there. In fact, Richard and Annie were married – hence the same last name - before his subsequent marriage and divorce with Cathryn Hankla, a Hollins University faculty member who Dillard published first upon establishing his press in 2016. Susan Hankla is Cathy’s sister. The sisters were raised in Richlands, Virginia, in the coal fields, where their mother was the town librarian. The 300-mile-long Clinch River flows through Richlands on its way to Kingston, Tennessee, its confluence with the Tennessee River.  “There ought to be some hoopla for Susan Hankla’s Clinch River. Her pure Americana—ghosts, abandoned houses, unfin