Heard-Hoard by Atsuro Riley
Recognized for his wildly original poetry and his uncanny and unparalleled ability to blend lyric and narrative, Atsuro Riley deepens here his uncommon mastery and tang. In Heard-Hoard, Riley has razor-exacted and raw-wired an absorbing new sequence of poems, a vivid weavework rendering an American place and its people. At once an album of tales, a portrait gallery, and a soundscape; an inscritched dirt-mural and hymnbook, Heard-Hoard encompasses a chorus of voices shot through with (mostly human) histories and mysteries, their old appetites as chronic as tides. From the crackling story-man calling us together in the primal circle to Tammy figuring time and time that yonder oak, this collection is a profound evocation of lives and loss and lore.