Ain’t the Land

poems by

William Rieppe Moore

~64 pages, $14 (+ shipping)

Projected Release Date: August/September 2026

An Advance Sale Discount price of $8.50 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $12.50/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. 

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William Rieppe Moore is from Richland County, South Carolina and moved to Unicoi County, Tennessee with his wife. He resumed teaching high school English after earning an MA in English from East Tennessee State University. Moore’s poetry has received various honors, including Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations as well as finalist honors in the Ron Rash Award in Poetry and second place in the George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in Appalachian Places, North American Review, Driftwood, Blue Earth Review, Appalachian Journal, James Dickey Review, River Heron Review, and Terrain.org.

William Rieppe Moore is one of the brightest new voices in Appalachian literature. He uses language the way a gifted musician plays a fretboard, and his poems in Ain’t the Land resonate like timeless mountain ballads. Moore is the ideal Southern poet: a virtuoso with words and voices, who can tell a great story through unforgettable imagery and entrancing metaphor. His poems sing the music of place, and the music of what happens, elevating it all into the highest convergence of art and life. ~Jesse Graves, author of Merciful Days and Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine

The roving intelligence of William Rieppe Moore’s brilliant first book alights on fifty-two almost unheard of places in a song sequence that dignifies the grace of Appalachian speech and life. A poet of nature and culture, Moore’s a master of great, unforgettable lines and courageous formal invention. His specialty is the sound of the human voice, and he’s equally adept with image and metaphor. This is poetry that astonishes with uncompromising originality and character. ~Rodney Jones, author of Elegy for the Southern Drawl and Salvation Blues

Duffield, Virginia

This road’s a crow ribbon cut loose
and stiffened to keeled bluffs.

A wooden silo roof wilts
to the ivies arising—grass roots’

green lightning. The hayman figured
his bales but didn’t factor in hail.

We just drive through the night
down 23, and I swear I hear Mama

sniffle in the milking parlor again:
down on the stool so I can’t see her.

There’s some robin eggs in the cellar,
she tells her. Go’n get you some.

My fists are full of catheads, but
the journey is already over, so

I can go find the mountain where
beanvines with leaves like anvils

don’t stop spiraling back down
toward the outposts of heaven.

Woodby Hill, Tennessee

This is my ninth winter without
a laughin’ god in the firewater

that whispers, I can strip all
the walls within the altar;

that stays up late with the mist
to confess, I didn’t see nothin’

while the tan grass rips away—
wet skin from an old blister,

and though the sun may come
lick the spoon of Greasy Creek

it goes back to soft heat in clouds
that seem to leak breastmilk

at the paps, where I’m at belly-
up, combin’ back my gossamers.

Let those eyes drift off now.
Let them be surprised to find

a soggy sleep, uncompromised
and puckered lips, preoccupied.

Estatoe, North Carolina

Once more, O ye laurels, take
up yer cap and bells, for here

carpets of fulsome chicory return
a bit early on the stem in this

scorched, red-clover wind. Now
brown thrashers chirrup with

a wilted plant a seed, plant a seed
while bald-faced hornets buzz

bands about our heads so as
to make us shrink where we stand,

where we’d let it grow, let it grow,
barely in soil swayed by nearby

brakes spawned by rhododendrons
that trailed the briars after fire

up here some years ago. There was
a drouth then, so bad one might wish

to gnaw mad roots to nub or see dew
pizen of a mornin’. To know it was.