Elijah Burrell "The Skin Of The River" (Poetry)

“The Skin of the River is a Southern, Biblical phantasmagoria, both funny and horrifying, touched and touching. Elijah Burrell’s terrific first book possesses a rich knowledge of poverty and an even richer understanding of the world both rich and poor. See if you can forget, for instance, ‘Stifling Pot, 1963,’ in which a man goes to the Saturday cockfights to beg for the dead roosters so he can feed his family Sunday dinner. I can’t, and I don’t want to.” —Andrew Hudgins Elijah Burrell earned his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. His writing has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Measure, Sugar House Review, Structo, Muscle & Blood, Free State Review, Swink Magazine, Cedars, The Furnace Review, Tidal Basin Review, The Country Dog Review, The Penwood Review, The Honey Land Review, Blast Furnace, Stymie Magazine, and many others. Burrell received the 2009 Cecil A. Blue Award in Poetry and the 2010 Jane Kenyon Scholarship at Bennington College. Burrell resides in Jefferson City, Missouri, with his wife and two little girls, and teaches creative writing and literature at Lincoln University.