Specter Mountain: Poems

Specter Mountain is a book-length poetry collaboration between Jesse Graves and William Wright that imagines the spiritual and ecological life of an embattled landscape. The collection fuses two striking poetic visions into a cohesive and innovative new perspective on nature and the inevitable imprint of human interaction with wilderness. Readers will gain a sense of the permanent beauty of rivers and mountains, timeless images of the sublime, and the grandeur that reaches beyond human life and influence. Specter Mountain is a book of voices, delivered by an impressive range of speakers, including even the mountain itself. Sometimes they speak in chorus and sometimes in isolation, out of the past and from the future, offering meditations and reflections on our changing world. These poems reveal a sensitivity to the passing of time, and to the many losses that people and places suffer and outlast together. If the mountain is a haunted landscape, it is also a place of aspiration, where traditions flourish and customs give meaning to the lives that pass there. In his preface to the book, celebrated poet and novelist Robert Morgan says,
Jesse Graves and William Wright are two of the most exciting talents in contemporary poetry. Before they have spoken in distinct and memorable individual voices. In Specter Mountain they have pooled their considerable gifts and found a synergy that yields a unique work that will serve as a landmark for our time, and for many years to come.