WINGS CRAFTED FROM PROPELLER BLADES, poetry by Jay McCoy

Publication Date: September 30, 2026

Paperback, 88 pages 

ISBN: 978-1-966677-60-4

Wings Crafted from Propeller Blades transports us to Jay McCoy’s Appalachian roots. A school picture, tending his mother’s garden, or baking a pie, these poems show us that simple memories are often the strongest.

Praise for Jay McCoy & Wings Crafted from Propeller Blades

Jay McCoy’s new book of poems gathers all the family around— here’s Aunt Madge, Sissy, Geraldine, Walter, Lurlene and Dollie, and Mom and Dad in the long arc of their lives together. They welcome the rest of us to share a meal with them, the food mouth-watering and abundant, and no one is a stranger here any longer. Through these poems, they tell us of their love stories, their heartbreaks, and there is poetry in every detail from the names of the quilt patterns to the outfits worn to the fair. McCoy revels in deft poetic forms and interactions with the words of other poets, from Nikki Finney and Juan Felipe Herrera to Frank O’Hara and the eternally under-appreciated Jack Spicer, and finally Kentucky’s own Jim Wayne Miller. If you are feeling low, treat yourself and set aside some time to spend with Jay McCoy and Wings Crafted from Propeller Blades, and welcome to the family.

—Jesse Graves, author of Merciful Days & Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place

Wings Crafted from Propeller Blades is an instruction manual for how to hold loss and still whirl with buoyant love. These poems sing with Appalachian storytelling, foodways, quilting, music, gardening, and more, inviting the land’s long memory itself to cast the spell we need against our grief. Jay McCoy is not only a true poet, he holds my highest esteem as a tradition bearer. May these miracle words draw us ever nearer to our land and people, forever alive.  

—Rebecca Gayle Howell, recipient of the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry

With the tender, elegiac voice of one left behind, the poems in Jay McCoy’s Wings Crafted from Propeller Blades navigate the enduring landscape of grief, reminding us that mourning is simply love that refuses to end. Whether finding the spirits of his departed parents in the birds at the feeder or honoring the dead through the quiet rituals of shared food, these poems are luminous and deeply felt. McCoy honors all those spirits who walk with us and watch over us. He invites us to sit with him for a while in that fragile, universally felt space where we are not yet okay but we trust that we will be someday.

—Denton Loving, author of Feller

This satisfying and honest book is about many things, chief of which is companionship.  Kin and colorful characters and ancestors crop up as we would expect.  But there are other companions here, too, from a cold creek to a dinner bell, from heirloom garden seed to the very names of quilt patterns.  McCoy enumerates these other companions out of gratitude and rightly so.  We cannot go through the world alone.  Our companions help us through it and for some of us a worthy guide may be an empty jelly jar or a mess of greasy beans.

—Maurice Manning, author of Railsplitter & others

About the Author

Jay McCoy is a poet and visual artist with deep Appalachian roots in Eastern Kentucky. He is  Director of the Kentucky Center for the Book and Director of Literary Arts Programs for Kentucky Humanities, and serves as an adjunct professor at Eastern Kentucky University and Bluegrass Community & Technical College teaching composition & rhetoric, creative writing, and Appalachian studies. Jay holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Biology from Transylvania University, a Master of Arts in Education in Counseling Psychology and Higher Education Administration from The University of Akron, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University. His writing has been published online and in print including Still: the Journal, Blue Fifth Review, Naugatuck River Review, The Heartland Review, and several anthologies, as well as his chapbook, The Occupation, published by Accents Publishing. He served as editor for the 2020 anthology of Lexington Poetry Month, Maps We Forgot to Bring. Wings Crafted from Propeller Blades is his first full-length collection.