All That Names Us - by Keith Walker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The poems in All That Names Us enfold memory, loss, yearning, and those moments of feeling at home in this world, those moments of not only feeling, but of being felt. The poems attempt to embody the beauty and brokenness and the healing that make up this mysterious human journey, to hold the paradoxes of both the isolation and the love, the suffering and the healing, the emptiness and the grace.

Review Quotes

"Eloquent and indelible, these plainspoken poems are full of sharp observations, surprising turns of phrase, and tough compassion. They are intensely real, evoking people and places in postwar America, both the rural South and the rustbelt North. Like my favorite books of poetry, this collection is also a secret autobiography. One by one, the poems are very fine, but they link up to suggest a memoir that looks both out at the world and deep into the soul."

-Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters

"The range of subjects, the variation of styles, the unforgettable stories, the lyrical focus: it's hard to believe that All That Names Us is a first collection of poems. But Keith Walker's mature vision bursts in full-force. It's a relief to engage with a poet so absorbed in-and can articulate in such precise details-the totality of his life, the complicated cartography of his place, the complexities of his characters. Walker writes from inside what he has richly absorbed. His poems are faithful to his family, his fellow citizens, his teachers, and, like James Wright, to his empathy for the lost, the lonely, the rejected. They embody the full emotional register that glows with spiritual resonance and deep compassion: he listens to the voices 'raging to be heard'...he 'learns the secret language.' Ultimately, Walker's poetry arrives at the too-rare understanding that 'the heart has a shelf for everything.' This numinous collection expands the heart."

-Philip Terman, author of My Blooming Everything