“A Psalm for Cottondale is an elegant, deeply attentive collection of contemporary poems that together form a resonant lyric meditation on race, land, history, and spiritual endurance in Alabama. This book makes a significant contribution to contemporary Southern and African American poetry and contemplative writing.” —Nadine Pinede, author of Uprooted: A Journey in Poems

“Sharony Green's A Psalm for Cottondale: Poems is refreshingly rooted in family, friends, and community. In this book, Green paints pictures of the Alabama neighborhoo, which added to her already vast expanse of loved ones. This collection resonates, reminding the reader of the true value of becoming part of a place.” —Brande N. McCleese is a professor, essayist, writer, and poet
 

“Capturing place, history, and memory, the Alabama community of Cottondale comes alive under Green’s creative and scholarly eye in this collection. From the Moon Winx Lodge sign to beloved meteorologist James Spann, she captures joy, survival, and resilience as a Black southern woman navigating the politics of historical memory, place, and an ever-evolving community of strong personalities, lost southern landscapes, and gentrified futures trapped in the shadow of The University of Alabama.” —Hilary N. Green, author of Unforgettable Sacrifice: How Black Communities Remembered the Civil War 

"Sharony Green writes Cottondale into being, street by street, name by name, until a Tuscaloosa neighborhood and its hard inheritance hold the whole weight of what 'home' means in America. These poems sort through a loaded word—cotton—with tenderness and nerve. A psalm, yes, and an act of belonging." —Blake Kimzey, author of Families Among Us

"A Psalm for Cottondale is a book about paying attention—to the neighbor who brings you tomatoes, to the owl, to a word like ‘cotton’ that carries three centuries before you even open your mouth. Sharony Green writes with a warmth that shouldn't be mistaken for ease. Her Cottondale is funny and grieving and historically dense, and she moves through it with the authority of someone who decided to stay. These poems know that place is people: those who died there, those who passed through, everyone still sitting on the porch. These poems know, too, that the particular—a houndstooth blanket, a mixing spoon, a Walmart phone, bologna, and bread—do what abstraction cannot. A Psalm for Cottondale earns its title." —Ana María Caballero, author of Material 

“An indelible ode to the American South, A Psalm for Cottondale captures the complexity of lives shaped by a landscape vibrant with memory. With precision and grace, Sharony Green beautifully distills the sights, sounds, and very spirit of a quintessential American community as it grapples with its history while also boldly reaching toward its future.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, author of the New York Times bestselling Dirtbag and Massachusetts and of the recent American Rambler