Nationally acclaimed poet, photographer, filmmaker, and novelist James
Baker Hall has long been regarded as one of Kentucky's most profound
artists. Hall's growing body of work is an essential part of Kentucky's
literary tradition, and yet his poetry in particular transcends the
borders of the Commonwealth.
The Total Light Process collects poems spanning Hall's celebrated
career as well as new poems that have never before been published. The
subjects of Hall's poems range from humorous and revealing portraits of
his fellow writers and friends Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, and Gurney
Norman, to the traumatic experience of his mother's suicide when he was
eight years old, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the tragic
murder of Matthew Shepherd.