PRELUDES & OTHER POEMS

From the tender rituals of marriage to the quiet reckonings of age, Wilcox writes with restraint and radiance. His poems echo Dickinson's precision, Frost's steadiness, and Eliot's search for order, yet remain distinctly his own-rooted in the Carolina soil that has always sustained him. In these pages, mourning becomes music, and every act of seeing becomes a form of grace.

Curated and introduced by Andrew Mack of Loblolly Press, this new collection continues the partnership that began with The Surfacing of Joy. Preludes & Other Poems invites readers of Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Jane Kenyon, and Maggie Smith alike to slow down, look closely, and find beauty in what endures.

Here is a poet who proves that clarity is its own grace, a long look made luminous.

Earl J. Wilcox, born in 1933, spent four decades teaching literature at Winthrop University, where he retired as Professor Emeritus of English. A scholar of Robert Frost and Jack London, he later turned to poetry full-time, publishing in The New Verse News and other journals. His debut, The Surfacing of Joy (Loblolly Press, 2023), marked the beginning of a late-life flowering that continues with Preludes & Other Poems. He lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where he still writes daily-faithful to language, to light, and to the grace found in ordinary days.