Goat-Footed Gods

Poems that center on the sinister American cryptid, the Goatman of Pope Lick.

In her sixth collection Goat-Footed Gods, award-winning poet, essayist, and teacher Kathleen Driskell seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of the infamous Goatman of Pope Lick, identified by The Washington Post as one of the deadliest cryptids in America. The Goatman or Pope Lick Monster, a legendary creature long rumored to roam the woods around Driskell’s Kentucky home, is alleged to have caused the deaths of at least five young people at Pope Lick Trestle, a railroad bridge with a ninety-foot drop at its center. The Goatman lyrics are braided with poems about Driskell’s child’s traumatic injury from a fall. Always at the heart of Driskell’s poetry is her insistence that the path to the sacred is found not through the doctrine of ancient gods, but in walking clear-eyed through the dark woods of our historical past and exploring the never-ending wonder of the natural world.

Award-winning poet, essayist, and teacher, Kathleen Driskell is the author of five collections of poetry. Her poems and essays have been published in The New Yorker, River Teeth, Southern Review, Shenandoah, Appalachian Review, and other literary magazines. She is chair of the Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville.