Heard Hoard

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.