A project of the Kentucky Writers Coalition, here is a collection of stories, poems, and essays which explore the role of tobacco in the economy, culture, and mythology of Kentucky and the tobacco-growing region.

Excerpt from the book---


Elegy for Smoke 
       -- by Ron Houchin

There was a time when some cared
how much smoke weighed.

Leaning on the rail of the Caspe,
a sailor packed a clay pipe

with Virginia burley and conjured white wisps
with a match. Almost every day

in the mouth of the Saint Lawrence dragged
on white caps and the odd canoe.

North America was on fire.
Indians and French trappers curled up

around fire and slept to music
of smoke threefourths of the year.

We've had a long marriage with smoke and fire.
Those parts of tobacco, coal, oil, and, wood

not completely combustible
turn into something like fog

with a body. We don't love them
as we did when smoke was like prayer.

I had a marriage once: brown skin
that showed when unwrapped and set on fire.

Everything became rosy white and took
my breath away. It never came back.

  

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