Shining Rock is a mountain in Appalachian North Carolina; we choose it as a title for our anthology because of its metaphorical properties. As editors, we come to poetry with a strong commitment to the literary traditions that challenge readers to become continually educated by poetry. We favor poems that practice difficulty not for its own sake, but because it provokes readers to new experiences of elucidating opacity, analyzing complexity, and discovering, in the concrete density of this poetry, meanings for themselves. We favor poetry that promotes the strenuous engagement of the imagination. This poetry yields more upon rereading, thus the design for an anthology.
"Thank you and your fellow editors for bringing a new room into this building we all make together." Jane Hirshfield
"The Shining Rock Poetry Anthology is shaping up to be a brilliant contribution to contemporary poetry." William Wright
"It's already on the way to being a shining star on the internet!" Clarence Major
