Stevie Nicks gets pop star poetry treatment from Atlanta duo

Stevie Nicks can be a polarizing figure. Whether or not you love her chesty vibrato and witchy aesthetic, there’s no denying her incredible songwriting talent and her phenomenal staying power in a fickle industry. I’m a fan, myself.

Fleetwood Mac originated as a British blues band seven years before Nicks and her boyfriend, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, joined the group, which already had a phenomenal female vocalist — the sublime Christine Perfect McVie. But there’s no denying the global impact the newcomers had on the band, especially Nicks, who would go on to have a successful solo career as well.

The twirling, top hat-wearing songstress is the latest pop culture muse for a new anthology of poems by Atlanta co-editors and poets Collin Kelley and Megan Volpert, the folks who brought us the 2023 Dolly Parton poetry anthology “Let Me Say This.”

"White Winged Doves" edited by Collin Kelley and Megan Volpert. (Courtesy of Madville Publishing)

“White Winged Doves” (Madville Publishing, out now) features 70-plus poems laced with mystical imagery, tales of heartache and nostalgic memories of a time when Nicks’ voice dominated the airwaves. The result is an earnest tribute to Nicks’ vulnerability, resilience and artistry.

Kelley, also a novelist and executive editor of Rough Draft, and Volpert, who published her treatise on “Why Alanis Morrisette Matters” last year, both have entries in the volume, as do nearly 60 other poets, including Georgians Julie E. Bloemeke, Melanie C. Duncan, Shannon Edwards, Karen Head, Amanda Killian and J.C. Reilly.

Particularly resonant is “The Woman Sings in Storms” by Nma Dhahir, who writes: “She moves like thunder wrapped in lace, / a voice of velvet, a heart unchained. / I found her once, between the cracks / of a vinyl groove, where ghosts remain.”

Other new poetry collections out this summer include:

"Broken Houses" by Chelsea Rathburn. (Courtesy of Louisiana State University Press)

“Broken Houses.” In this new collection, Georgia poet laureate Chelsea Rathburn explores a hardscrabble childhood in Florida and her family of colorful characters including a sometimes-homeless bag lady and a notorious bank robber. But there are also occasional moments of wonder, like an aerial tour of Christo’s 1983 environmental art installation “Surrounded Islands” in Miami. At the core of this collection, though, is the heartfelt search for a place to call home, both literally and metaphorically. (Louisiana State University Press, July 29)

"Tree of Knowledge" by Victoria Chang. (Courtesy of FSG)

“Tree of Knowledge.” The uncertain fate of a eucalyptus tree shorn of its limbs sets the stage for this new collection by Victoria Chang, the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and director of Poetry @ Tech, who was long-listed for the National Book Award for her poetry collection “Obit.” The poems explore themes of loss, identity, artmaking and the natural world, as well as the 1885 expulsion of Chinese immigrants from Eureka, California. (FSG, July 7)