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Cloth $20.00 ISBN: 9780226789422 Will Publish October 2021
E-book $19.99 Available for pre-order. ISBN: 9780226789569 Will Publish October 2021

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Heard-Hoard

Atsuro Riley

Heard-Hoard

Atsuro Riley

96 pages | 2 halftones | 7 1/4 x 9 1/4
Cloth $20.00 ISBN: 9780226789422 Will Publish October 2021
E-book $19.99 ISBN: 9780226789569 Will Publish October 2021
Winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, this new collection of verse from Atsuro Riley offers a vivid weavework rendering and remembering an American place and its people.

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.
Contents
CRACKLER   
CALL           
SUNDER      
SHED            
STRIPLINGS
CHORUS: Petition                                                                                                                
MOTH           
CREEKTHROAT                                                                                                                 
DUET            
CLARY         
CHORUS: Lobe                                                                                                                     
STRANGER  
CAW              
CRAW           
GOLDHOUND                                                                                                                     
CHORUS: Milk                                                                                                                      
ORIGIN        
RHYTHM      
CHORUS: Seed                                                                                                                     
ELEMENT    
CHORUS: Knell                                                                                                                    
OAK              
LADDER      
CHORUS: Hankerer                                                                                                             
THICKET     
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
 
Review Quotes
Publishers Weekly
"Heard-Hoard by Atsuro Riley weaves reflections on America’s landscapes and its people in poems that serve as portraits, stories, and hymns, combining personal accounts with lore."
Julie Carr, judge, Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America
“A landscape charged with the bright light of discernment, where emotions are stirred by rhythmic torsion and sonic density.”
Terrance Hayes
"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."
 
Kay Ryan
"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."
 
Linda Gregerson
"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."
 

Poetry Society of America: Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award
Won

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