Twin Lead Lines - by Lou Turner (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Twin Lead Lines, the remarkably original debut from poet and Styrofoam Winos musician Lou Turner, is born of overlaps: those of ancestry and chosen family, of show business and DIY paths of artmaking, and of listening deeply to others and oneself. Turner's distant cousin and Grand Ole Opry legend Little Jimmy Dickens plays a role in the poems as part-muse, part-foil, and full lode star -- not flawless, but bright -- for the poems to orient around as Turner maps her own voice and calling to artmaking. Dickens is Turner's partner in one of many of the duets played throughout Twin Lead Lines; along with a book-length series of anagram couplets, the twin-lead wire used to transmit radio signals, and the twin lead style of guitar playing made popular by Dickens' band. Turner deftly moves between traditional and invented forms in these poems, which - like a country song - are by turns funny and searching.

Review Quotes

"These meticulously lyrical poems serve not only as auto-ethnographic lenses through which we can see both Little Jimmy Dickens being examined, but also the person doing the looking and the listening: the poet is steady, stable, startlingly vulnerable. At times, this work reminds me of the poetic documentations of M. NourbeSe Philip and Desiree C. Bailey. These poems are exquisitely fashioned and rewire lines like recombinant DNA: the same letters can generate a totally (and tonally) different sound and meaning. This book is a veritable feat in symphonic composition." - Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of

"Like the bird's nest in the VALERO sign, / I've been making home in the O's I can find," writes Lou Turner in her astounding poetry collection, Twin Lead Lines. In these euphonious poems, Turner reaches out to the past--to Little Jimmy Dickens--to present beloveds, and to the future. This is a book that demands to be read and reread. Go ahead, turn back to page one and find yourself "bootscootin' through eternity again." - Paige Lewis, author of Space Struck

About the Author

Lou Turner is a writer and musician (Styrofoam Winos, Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band) based in Nashville, TN. She holds an MFA in poetry from Randolph College and is the author of the chapbook Shape Note Singing (VA Press, 2021) as well as the editor of Quarter Notes, a literary magazine with a musical ear. Turner was a 2023 recipient of a solo artist residency from The Cabins, as well as a recipient of a Nashville Metro Arts Thrive Grant. The 2024 winner of The Porch Prize in Poetry, recent poems have appeared in OEI's Aural Poetics issue, Voicemail Poems, The Continental Review, EcoTheo, and elsewhere. Turner's latest solo record Microcosmos (SPINSTER) was named a Best Album of 2022 by NPR Music's Ann Powers. Twin Lead Lines - called "a veritable feat in symphonic composition" by Diana Khoi Nguyen - is her first book.