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.
Atsuro Riley is the author of Romey's Order, also published by the University of Chicago Press, which was the recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, The Believer Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress. His work has been honored with the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and the Wood Prize given by Poetry magazine. Brought up in the South Carolina lowcountry, Riley lives in San Francisco.
Title: Heard-Hoard
Author: Riley, Atsuro
ISBN: 9780226789422
Binding:
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 2021-09-22
Number of Pages: 96
Weight: 0.3491 kg
A landscape charged with the bright light of discernment, where emotions are stirred by rhythmic torsion and sonic density. --Julie Carr, judge, Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America Intoxicating. . . Sounds unheard and unrivaled since Atsuro Riley's acclaimed debut permeate Heard-Hoard. His elegant rhythms are atmospheric and robust, his neologisms transform the 'weed-embrangling snuffle-path, ' his vernacular is magical as 'dew-sparks galaxifying the crabgrass.' Amid each mesmerizing reading, like dancing to a good song for a good long time before truly hearing its lyrics, Heard-Hoard's remarkable stories crystallize; music becomes narrative. Atsuro Riley is an extraordinary poet. This book holds all the meanings of fantastic. --Terrance Hayes Magnificently singular. If evocation of place, however pungent, were the main thing in Riley's work I wouldn't be very interested. But he's pursuing something a lot more ambitious, even abstract, that has deeply to do with, I almost want to say, sacred properties of language or language that could cast a spell against harm. He needs to make big sense; he has the deep confidence it takes to press language hard--not for self-amusement but to hear something he is desperate to hear. --Kay Ryan The category of the 'mythic' has been much cheapened by overuse, but Atsuro Riley's Heard-Hoard restores the term to its original and originary power. The English language has rarely been so richly augmented in such little space. --Linda Gregerson
