Entry Category: Poetry - Starting with L

Paul Lake is a poet, novelist, and professor residing in Russellville (Pope County). He received the Porter Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards offered in Arkansas, in recognition of his poetry. Paul Lake was born on August 1, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Barbara Hull Lake, was a fifth-grade teacher, and his father, Paul Saunders Lake, was a manager and salesman for Metropolitan Life. He had three siblings: James, Stephen, and Melody. Lake lived in a row house on Giddings Avenue as a child in Baltimore. When he was in the second grade, Lake and his family moved to rural Harford County, where he attended elementary school and junior high school. After graduating from Edgewood High School, …

Looking for Shiloh (1968) was the last collection of poetry published by Edsel Ford before his death at the age of forty-one in 1970. Ford spent much of his childhood in northwestern Arkansas and majored in journalism at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). This collection was selected from more than 450 submitted manuscripts to receive the Devins Memorial Award and to be published by the University of Missouri Press. A second printing of the collection was made in 1970. By the late 1960s, Ford was a leading regional poet who was receiving significant national recognition. Ford had served as editor of the “Golden Country” poetry column in the Ozark Mountaineer since February 1958, served as media …