Mountain Roosters, Full-Length Collection, 97 pages, from Pine Row Press
Mountain Roosters is the debut full-length book of poetry by Matthew Sidney Parsons being published by Pine Row Press. The book addresses social issues such as gender, cultural identity, poverty, politics, and generational succession with a clear dialectic voice supported by strong images and quick wit. Mountain Roosters examines the modern Appalachian man through the lens of the author’s ever-evolving relationship with the men he has known – featuring poetic sketches of the characters as you move through the collection. In a bit of beautiful irony, Mountain Roosters pries open the hard shell of the country man using the acutely emotional communication range of the poetic form.
 
“The poems in this collection are wild with invention as they respond to fallen-down content through
wonderful rhymes and living form. The result is a kind of finely-tuned music playing along with everyday
sorrow and expected grief that serves as a believable backdrop to recent Appalachian reality. The poems
in this fine collection signal love and anxiety for the unknown that comes after such love in equal
measure.”
 
– Maurice Manning
 
“There is so much music within the pages of this debut collection of poetry. That music is so fine and
lovely that it would be enough on its own but this book also contains wordplay, wit, history, and deep
insights into Appalachian culture, the complications of masculinity, and the natural world. It is rare for
such a young writer to possess so much wisdom but it shows up throughout the pages of Mountain
Roosters, announcing a bright new voice who is celebrating and critiquing his place and his people in
complex, beautiful ways.”
 
– Silas House
 
"Matt Parsons’s debut collection untangles the mythos of what it means to be male in Appalachia, intensified by rhymes and a rhythm that only a songwriter can achieve. In language that rings “like belt buckles and banjo strings,” the poems in Mountain Roosters pay tribute to men who share a “coal-covered history.” And while “it’s the nature of men / to pretend / it’s no big deal,” these poems state otherwise and invite us to reconsider our own notions of masculinity, power, and influence in contemporary Appalachia."
 
– Marianne Worthington