Blue If Only I Could Tell You

<i>Blue If Only I Could Tell You</i> is the thirteenth collection of poetry by Richard Tillinghast. Long awaited, the book is his first since <i>Wayfaring Stranger</i> came out in 2012. Melodious, lyrical, these poems of place and displacement are deeply personal at times as they look back over a long and eventful life. Tillinghast also focuses on troubled and troubling aspects of the American story: the Indian Wars of the 19th century and the history of race relations in his native South, from slavery to the country’s current racial reckoning. It is rare to see a poet with such gifts for musicality, vivid imagery and finely honed diction address himself so pointedly to issues of social and political import.