Signals

This title offers meditations on cultural memory, race relations, and sexual identity in the New South.Deeply rooted in the recognizable landscapes and legacies of the American South, these lyric poems couple daring engagements with topics of race and sexuality with tender reflections on personal and cultural histories. Madden’s adopted home of South Carolina rises to the surface in poems set at Folly Beach, Fort Moultrie, Lake Keowee-Toxaway, and Middleton Place. His interrogations of social oppression evoke the ubiquitous iconography of the bygone Confederacy, a first encounter with the miniseries Roots, and a cameo appearance by Strom Thurmond. In the collection’s final section, Madden turns to issues of sexual difference, community formation, and the place of gay men in contemporary southern culture. Throughout he repeatedly turns to the artifacts that demarcate his memories of youth in the rural South.