Heard-Hoard

by Atsuro Riley

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.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 2021

Reviews

[Chris Via]

A symphony of wordgasms.

Video review now available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLMgq...

[Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it twice this weekend. Loved the whole collection.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful for all the same reasons as the first, Romey's Order. For my money, what makes Riley so distinctive is his making every use of alliteration and internal rhyme, which is so underused in so much English-language poetry, and to exploit the fact that there are no hard lines between nouns and verbs in English either. It gives it a sound and an impress that so many Romance-language-derived poetical forms leave completely by the wayside, and he does it perfectly.

[Derek Bosshard]

A great book of poems made up of a wild collection of sounds and playful syntax. Read this out loud! Here’s a bit from “Sunder” that kind of feels like a vision statement for Riley’s poetry:

Lord the sounds such as rose from him
carried so–
Carved
into us. Clings.

[Thurston Hunger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a landscape, words here are like burrs that catch on your clothing, dirt under your fingernails. The rhythm of the poems bird-like, but the bird might be a tad drunk on those berries. Word juxtapositions along the journey like gemels, natural wonders, fused and bruised.

[Kari]

My ears feasted on the sounds it heard while reading the poems out loud, and I don’t doubt the merits of this collection. However, it all went over my head and so I didn’t fully enjoy it. That’s on me rather than the author as I’m still trying to find my footing in the world of poetry.

[Amrita · Rating 5 out of 5]

such an absorbing and startlingly graceful collection; an author i'll return to many times

[Benjamin Doughty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful sounds

[Alex McCullough · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) poetry but make it asmr