Noel Smith

pRAISE FOR
THE WELL STRING

"Smith takes us on a journey of wonders as we travel with her across time and place to Appalachia 'snarled up' with complexities -- over the course of the entire 20th Century, presenting not so much a poetry collection as a novel in poems."

--Silas House 

"The Well String is a
significant contribution to Appalachian Literature."    --- Ron Rash

"Noel Smith’s extraordinary poems light up the dusky past – bringing people and their times to startling life."
--Lee Smith

"Noel Smith’s first poems struck me with their verbal power. This first collection gathers their strong voices together for all of us."
--Kathryn Stripling Byer

"There’s powerful music in Noel Smith’s The Well String. Work is the key and nature is the rhythm in this song cycle sung down generations of an Appalachian family."

--George Ella Lyon

the well string is ...

... a fictional account in narrative poetry of a family and its neighbors in southeastern Kentucky from 1885 to the present time.