Louder Birds by Angela Voras-Hills

Angela Voras-Hills' Louder Birds is a wondrous book, one that draws us, irresistibly, into a world where we confront the tangled consequences of yearning and innocence. Rarely is such a close and careful watching of the world coupled with such a hungry willingness to “tear into it like bread.” Just as ice fishermen hoist “pike up through icy holes—their shiny bodies struggling as they are pulled by their lips into sky,” so too do these fierce and fecund poems tug me, palpably, toward transcendence. I’m reminded of the ache and splendor of living as a body in this world, that the only heaven we’re promised is the one we have here. —Michael Bazzett, author of The Interrogation Voras-Hills knows how to tear into a day like bread, to dwell in those moments of being where her lyric lines slip through memory's flexible time. Though these poems take on difficulties and even tragedies, I am consoled by the wisdom in every line that asks—unflinchingly—what it means to make a life in such precarious and miraculous bodies. Take this book and take heart. This poet knows the weight of every minute. —Traci Brimhall, author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod Reading Louder Birds—inhabiting its landscapes, both external and internal—reminds me of what poems can do. —Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones