Heard-Hoard

I’ve been haunted by Atsuro Riley’s poem Moth since encountering it in the pages of Poetry in 2015. “Came the day I came here young / I mothed / my self. I cleaved apart.” The poem is marked by turnings where the speaker remakes a self in the wake of trauma, even as it is the hidden self that forms the basis for the poem’s devastating refrain: “My born name keeps but I don’t say.” Something of this cleaving informs all the poems in Heard-Hoard. Riley splits words apart and arranges them in counterpoint to create a singular music, an effect that reminded me of cracking open a geode to reveal its secret inner glittering. Readers of these poems will enter a fully formed world, with its own characters, myths, chorus, and repetitions. Sonically and emotionally complex, Heard-Hoard is a collection to treasure and return to.