Other poems have been reprinted from The High Plains, Northwest Review, Kansas Renaissance and Quindaro. I want to thank Annette Porter for permission to reprint these poems, especially those from No Rain From These Clouds. In my introduction, I have tried to put Porter's work in perspective as it relates to Kansas Poetry as a whole. I am indebted to Lorrin for my first reading of this poetry. His The Kansas Experience in Poetry features Porter, and his interest has spurred other Kansans to read and study Porter's work.

Lorrin Leland is responsible for the continuing exposure of Kansans to Kenneth Porter. Jonathan Wesley Bell), wrote the biographical introduction to these poems, evoking Porter's life and work with generous quotations from the poet's letters. Lorrin Leland, editor of The Kansas Experience in Poetry, and author of a biographical article on Porter for T he Kansas Art Reader (ed. Included here in the months before his unexpected death in July of 1981. He, then, is the actual editor of this book, having made the final selections I wrote to Kenneth Porter, and he chose, from his two published volumes, The High Plains and No Rain From These Clouds, and from small magazine publications, those poems he felt most represented his work as it pertained to Kansas. They are some of the best ever written by a Kansan, and no study of Kansas poetry could be complete without them. Kenneth Wiggins Porter: The Kansas Poems, grew out of a desire to teach poems by Kenneth Porter that had been out of print for a number of years. Kenneth Porter and Kansas Poetry.xĪddress to Kansans.1 (Page numbers refer to the paperback edition publishedīy the Center for Kansas Studies, © 1992) With introductions by Thomas Fox Averill and Lorrin Leland The Kansas Poems of Kenneth Wiggins Porter

Pitch Green by The Brothers Washburn