By Karen Biscopink

Minutes after sitting down with Mark Jackley’s new chapbook, Appalachian Night, the power went out in my neighborhood. I completed the required activities: lit our decorative candles; searched for a never-used flashlight, buried somewhere during the recent move; veered between spooky panic and romanticism. Deciding to move forward with my planned reading was a fantastic decision on all counts. In fact, the first poem (“Appalachian Night”), begins, “Enfolded by pure darkness / a train slips through the hills.”