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 by the Whiting Awards for his 'wildly original' poetry and his "uncanny and unparalleled ability to blend lyric and narrative," Atsuro Riley extends and deepens his uncommon mastery here. In Heard-Hoard, Riley has 'razor-exacted' and 'raw-wired' this absorbing new sequence of poems, a vivid weavework rendering and remembering an American place and its people. At once an album of tales, a portrait gallery, an "inscritched" dirt-mural, and a hymnbook, Heard-Hoard encompasses a chorus of voices, shot through with their (mostly human) histories and their mysteries. From the crackling story-man calling us together in the primal circle to Tammy figuring "time and time that yonder oak," Atsuro Riley's new collection is a profound evocation of lives and lore, "a lit meat-mesh of heards." In an early blurb, Linda Gregerson writes, "The category of the 'mythic' has been much cheapened by overuse, but Heard-Hoard restores the term to its original and originary power. The English language has rarely been so richly augmented in such little space. His first book won Riley an extensive and passionate following. His readers will be thrilled, as I am, by this new collection." Contracts, Rights, and Permissions"--