The Red Book: Selected Poems, Old and New

Prior to her suicide in the summer of 2013, Kathleene West left instructions to her literary executor Kitty McCord and to her long-time poetry editor to care for her writing. Hence, much of her work is now housed in the archives at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln library, and, as promised to her before her death, is included in this collection of new and selected poems. She had always wanted a “red” book, she had said, and The Red Book: Selected Poems, Old and New is the culmination of that last wish.

This book includes the best of her work from No Warning, Land Bound, Garden Report, Water Witching, Plainswoman, The Farmer’s Daughter, Death of a Regional Poet, Tourists of the Revolution, and from files of previously unpublished or uncollected work. The Red Book attests to the fact that West was a powerful voice for poetry, and one that had places left to go.