From "Chord": come the marrow-hours when he couldn't sleep, the boy river-brinked and chorded. Mud-bedded himself here in the root-mesh; bided. Sieved our alluvial sounds - "Romey's Order" is an indelible sequence of poems voiced by an invented (and inventive) boy-speaker called Romey, set alongside a river in the South Carolina lowcountry. As the word-furious eye and voice of these poems, Romey urgently records - and tries to order - the objects, inscape, injuries, and idiom of his 'blood-home' and childhood world. Sounding out the nerves and nodes of language to transform 'every burn-mark and blemish', to 'bind our river-wrack and leavings', Romey seeks to forge finally (if even for a moment) a chord in which he might live. Intently visceral, aural, oral, Atsuro Riley's poems bristle with musical and imaginative pleasures, with storytelling and picture-making of a new and wholly unexpected kind.

About the Author
Atsuro Riley was brought up in the South Carolina lowcountry. His work has appeared in Poetry, Threepenny Review, and The McSweeney's Book of Poets Picking Poets. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and the Wood Prize from Poetry magazine.

Reviews
"The Phoenix Poets list contains a number of poets currently on my list of favorites. This is a strong, vital series that has given voice to some of the best voices in American poetry today." - Billy Collins "The best literature forces you out of your old eyes, and that's what happens here. Atsuro Riley's Romey's Order is deep craft - brilliant and consuming and thoroughly strange. When you put this book down, American poetry will be different than when you picked it up." - Kay Ryan, United States Poet Laureate.



Book Information
ISBN 9780226719443
Author Atsuro Riley
Format Paperback
Page Count 64
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 113g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 17mm * 1mm