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Romey's Order
Romey's Order is an indelible sequence of poems voiced by an invented (and inventive) boy 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 story-telling and picture-making of a new and wholly unexpected kind.
WINNER OF THE KATE TUFTS DISCOVERY AWARD, THE WHITING WRITERS' AWARD, THE BELIEVER POETRY AWARD, THE WITTER BYNNER AWARD/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, LANNAN LITERARY FELLOWSHIP, NEA FELLOWSHIP, THE PUSHCART PRIZE "Atsuro Riley's astonishing and original debut collection, Romey's Order , thrives off its music. The poems are about the attempt to make sense of the world, to account for all the strange and disparate details that enthrall consciousness, and to hold them in some kind of right relation. . . There's a lot to marvel at here . . .The tension between the world of fact into which each of us is born and the desire to forge our own new worlds results here in beguiling music, a music that brings these poems alive, with all their sinew and subtlety."-- Peter Campion, Poetry
Atsuro Riley's indelible first-book masterpiece--opens with "Once upon a time," and thereafter an entire world emerges. . . Romey's Order presents a world teeming with mystery, natural wonder, childhood discovery, and--everywhere under the surface--the secret, almost magical power of language. Throughout the book, Riley's evocative abilities are flat-out astonishing.
The handcrafted poems of Romey's Order bear the mark of a fully developed, highly idiosyncratic sensibility--a sensibility that lends a from-out-of-nowhere quality to this collection, and that results in poems that are a pure delight to read. Riley's debut is a blast of fresh air for poetry, leaving one with the almost unsettling what would happen if his next collection outdid this one?
-- The Believer magazine, May 2011 ( The Believer Poetry Award citation)
"Atsuro Riley's Romey's Order is a dazzling first book. . . among the year's best. . .The lexical fireworks power the narrative with physicality. The pleasures of Romey's Order are wondrous and manifold."-- Dallas Morning News
"One of the most exciting and distinctive debut collections in years."-- The Believer
"A stunning first book of poems. . . . Even read silently, Mr. Riley's delicious words roll and roil in the mouth."-- New York Times
"Originality is easier said than done. Most works of art, like most consumer goods, are versions or outright imitations. In contemporary poetry, even the so-called experimental often seems derivative and weighted with conventions. But when a new book of poems is as different from precedents as Atsuro Riley's Romey's Order , readers should take special notice."-- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Atsuro Riley's Romey's Order is a first book with rare, powerful distinction--experimental in its forms and syntax, yet familiar as an old-time fiddle for its Appalachian twang, landscape, and imagery." -- Kenyon Review
"Atsuro Riley's strange, beautiful and unsettling debut is like nothing else you will read this year."-- Hudson Review
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 story-telling and picture-making of a new and wholly unexpected kind.
WINNER OF THE KATE TUFTS DISCOVERY AWARD, THE WHITING WRITERS' AWARD, THE BELIEVER POETRY AWARD, THE WITTER BYNNER AWARD/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, LANNAN LITERARY FELLOWSHIP, NEA FELLOWSHIP, THE PUSHCART PRIZE "Atsuro Riley's astonishing and original debut collection, Romey's Order , thrives off its music. The poems are about the attempt to make sense of the world, to account for all the strange and disparate details that enthrall consciousness, and to hold them in some kind of right relation. . . There's a lot to marvel at here . . .The tension between the world of fact into which each of us is born and the desire to forge our own new worlds results here in beguiling music, a music that brings these poems alive, with all their sinew and subtlety."-- Peter Campion, Poetry
Atsuro Riley's indelible first-book masterpiece--opens with "Once upon a time," and thereafter an entire world emerges. . . Romey's Order presents a world teeming with mystery, natural wonder, childhood discovery, and--everywhere under the surface--the secret, almost magical power of language. Throughout the book, Riley's evocative abilities are flat-out astonishing.
The handcrafted poems of Romey's Order bear the mark of a fully developed, highly idiosyncratic sensibility--a sensibility that lends a from-out-of-nowhere quality to this collection, and that results in poems that are a pure delight to read. Riley's debut is a blast of fresh air for poetry, leaving one with the almost unsettling what would happen if his next collection outdid this one?
-- The Believer magazine, May 2011 ( The Believer Poetry Award citation)
"Atsuro Riley's Romey's Order is a dazzling first book. . . among the year's best. . .The lexical fireworks power the narrative with physicality. The pleasures of Romey's Order are wondrous and manifold."-- Dallas Morning News
"One of the most exciting and distinctive debut collections in years."-- The Believer
"A stunning first book of poems. . . . Even read silently, Mr. Riley's delicious words roll and roil in the mouth."-- New York Times
"Originality is easier said than done. Most works of art, like most consumer goods, are versions or outright imitations. In contemporary poetry, even the so-called experimental often seems derivative and weighted with conventions. But when a new book of poems is as different from precedents as Atsuro Riley's Romey's Order , readers should take special notice."-- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Atsuro Riley's Romey's Order is a first book with rare, powerful distinction--experimental in its forms and syntax, yet familiar as an old-time fiddle for its Appalachian twang, landscape, and imagery." -- Kenyon Review
"Atsuro Riley's strange, beautiful and unsettling debut is like nothing else you will read this year."-- Hudson Review
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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April 8, 2023Video review now available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLMgq...
October 17, 2013
A.
MAZING.
MAZING.
April 7, 2021
I first came across Riley’s poems in Poetry magazine. Their strange and haunting uniqueness immediately struck me. The poet’s childhood appears to have been magical and tragic (tragical?) enough to have gifted him this special relationship with language. Riley should publish more books but last I checked this is the only one.
January 25, 2014
Not a huge fan although there's a lot to admire. Riley has brilliant imagery, but which -- maybe because his world is so different from mine -- fail to really connect for me. Take the first poem,
"Once upon a time a ditch pipe got left behind behind Azalea Industrial...the boy shook and sheltered in its mouth awhile -- hoo-hoo! hey-O! -- and bent and went on in. It was like a cave but clean. He C-curved his spine against one wall to fit, and humming something, sucked his shirttail".
In the next stanza he writes
"What the boy called inside-oku called him back. He was hooked right quick on the well-bottom peace of the pumicey concrete and how sounds sounded in there, and re-sounded. Tight-curled as he had to get -- like a cling-shrimp one day, a pill-bug, a bass-clef, a bison's eye; an abalone (ocean-ear!)"
There's a ton of self-consciousness of the written verse -- "C-curve", "sounds sounded in there, and re-sounded" -- which I appreciate. The compound word 'inside-oku', oku meaning "interior, deep space" in Japanese, seems to me a brilliant linguistic/cross-cultural import. Spoken aloud, oku has something of the echo of a hollow. "inside-oku" is so very very right to build a sound space of a ditchpipe. Although: Riley's images build and resound -- although, he is a child of two languages and he has the sense of auditory uncanny that comes from this junction, he never, it seems to me, moves beyond cacophony. I want something more than just a vivid -- very vivid, very self-aware -- image of this child. I want to know what all this means, what he thinks & feels as well as what he sees/hears. I want metaphysics beyond mere phenomenon. As such "Romey's Order" feels fundamentally incomplete, more a case study in exotic diction, sound invention, than a complete book of poesie.
"Once upon a time a ditch pipe got left behind behind Azalea Industrial...the boy shook and sheltered in its mouth awhile -- hoo-hoo! hey-O! -- and bent and went on in. It was like a cave but clean. He C-curved his spine against one wall to fit, and humming something, sucked his shirttail".
In the next stanza he writes
"What the boy called inside-oku called him back. He was hooked right quick on the well-bottom peace of the pumicey concrete and how sounds sounded in there, and re-sounded. Tight-curled as he had to get -- like a cling-shrimp one day, a pill-bug, a bass-clef, a bison's eye; an abalone (ocean-ear!)"
There's a ton of self-consciousness of the written verse -- "C-curve", "sounds sounded in there, and re-sounded" -- which I appreciate. The compound word 'inside-oku', oku meaning "interior, deep space" in Japanese, seems to me a brilliant linguistic/cross-cultural import. Spoken aloud, oku has something of the echo of a hollow. "inside-oku" is so very very right to build a sound space of a ditchpipe. Although: Riley's images build and resound -- although, he is a child of two languages and he has the sense of auditory uncanny that comes from this junction, he never, it seems to me, moves beyond cacophony. I want something more than just a vivid -- very vivid, very self-aware -- image of this child. I want to know what all this means, what he thinks & feels as well as what he sees/hears. I want metaphysics beyond mere phenomenon. As such "Romey's Order" feels fundamentally incomplete, more a case study in exotic diction, sound invention, than a complete book of poesie.
February 20, 2022
Wherefore art thou Romey? Down by the river? Or just down. Maybe hiding, but in a nut-meat tiny space between lines of free verse.
Might just be me, but this somehow rings a distant bell on a ship piloted by Captain Beefheart.
Might just be me, but this somehow rings a distant bell on a ship piloted by Captain Beefheart.
February 4, 2017
Brilliant and moving, a distant echo of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn going down the Mississippi on a homemade raft.
April 3, 2022
The language in this book is stunning, a joy to read, I couldn't put it down. I recommend it very highly
November 30, 2016
Magical language, rhythm and images.
November 16, 2011
Romey's Order, by Atsuro Riley
(64 pages/University of Chicago Press, 2010)
Atsuro Riley's rich, jangling, spry, feisty sound-paintings in Romey's Order make reading his poetry like taking a synesthetic drug: sometimes it is hard to tell if you are tasting a sound, or feeling a color, or vividly remembering a place you've never visited.
"This is the house (and jungle-strangled yard) I come from and carry.
The air our here is supper-singed (and bruise-tingeing) and close. From where I'm hid (a perfect Y-crotch perch of medicine-smelling sweet gum), I can belly-worry this (welted) branch and watch for swells (and coming squalls)
along our elbow curve of river..."
Riley creates a way of seeing through sound: read his work aloud. It is meant to be read aloud. What comes out of your mouth will sound like a southern gothic symphony, and it will be a place you want to live.
In the poem, "Skillet" Riley stews in all the goth of Faulkner, but then boils the broth off. He claims his language and then spins and spins and spins with it, like a gypsy moth, or like Willy Wonka with the flavor of cast iron:
"Was mine-drawn,
Was pig-iron;
Is a cast-heft
Fact.
Chokedamp's in it
Born blackdamp.
Blood-iron
Ore-stope, lode-lamps,
Turnturbulating crubble-corf and -barrows.
Trace-tastes of (blast-furnace) harrow-smelt and pour.
Holds the heat hard. Rememories flavors: no warshing.
Carques and plaques itself in layers, like a pearl."
Finally, there is a book of poetry not “about” language, but singing language alive. Romey's Order conjures: place, people, scent, humidity, humor, meaning. It is pure maple sorcery.
(64 pages/University of Chicago Press, 2010)
Atsuro Riley's rich, jangling, spry, feisty sound-paintings in Romey's Order make reading his poetry like taking a synesthetic drug: sometimes it is hard to tell if you are tasting a sound, or feeling a color, or vividly remembering a place you've never visited.
"This is the house (and jungle-strangled yard) I come from and carry.
The air our here is supper-singed (and bruise-tingeing) and close. From where I'm hid (a perfect Y-crotch perch of medicine-smelling sweet gum), I can belly-worry this (welted) branch and watch for swells (and coming squalls)
along our elbow curve of river..."
Riley creates a way of seeing through sound: read his work aloud. It is meant to be read aloud. What comes out of your mouth will sound like a southern gothic symphony, and it will be a place you want to live.
In the poem, "Skillet" Riley stews in all the goth of Faulkner, but then boils the broth off. He claims his language and then spins and spins and spins with it, like a gypsy moth, or like Willy Wonka with the flavor of cast iron:
"Was mine-drawn,
Was pig-iron;
Is a cast-heft
Fact.
Chokedamp's in it
Born blackdamp.
Blood-iron
Ore-stope, lode-lamps,
Turnturbulating crubble-corf and -barrows.
Trace-tastes of (blast-furnace) harrow-smelt and pour.
Holds the heat hard. Rememories flavors: no warshing.
Carques and plaques itself in layers, like a pearl."
Finally, there is a book of poetry not “about” language, but singing language alive. Romey's Order conjures: place, people, scent, humidity, humor, meaning. It is pure maple sorcery.
May 22, 2015
Favorite book I purchased (or got gifted) at AWP 15 -- hell, favorite book I've read in some time. I'm a little late on the draw with the pub date, I suppose. Heard him at the AWP 15 Cave Canem reading. No, I guess it's not for everybody -- and that's just what I kin to. This is a world and a sensibility that makes hills of beans more sense than anything I'm getting in my American Poets of America emails everyday. Bidart mentions Hopkins on the back of the book and others seem to echo the influence -- heavily accented lines: light on the function words, big with modifiers and fundaments and such. Berryman also seems an obvious influence -- the inversions and grammatical oddities. Riley captures the striving toward expression -- of an essence or image or moment -- when language is just outside of the child self's reach; thus, you have this adult poet (an incredibly dextrous one) layering his lexicon with the groping child speak. It's lush and dense and unapologetic and queer and hermetic and desperate. Southern and lyric. It broke my heart and blew my head off, so I'm shouting out my neck hole: "And how the pinch-jointed ants are sometimes seen going slowly frantic over them in the side-yard, crawling over and over each hard-glazed casing, pacing and praying for some surface-craze or opening, feeler-tapping for some way inside the skins ..."
August 17, 2011
I have half a dozen books of poetry next to my bed and I'm slowly picking away at them. I think that's a perfectly acceptable way of reading poetry. Romey's Order was an exception. I read it from start to finish. That's mostly because of the nature of the poems--they are all written from the perspective of a half-Japanese boy growing up in rural South Carolina. Such a conceit might seem like a gimmick, but Riley turns it into something beautiful. Poetic license is taken to new heights as new compound words are created left and right, but somehow it works. A novel's worth of ideas and imagery are crammed into this relatively short collection of poems. Even if you're not all that into poetry, this collection is worth a shot.
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October 28, 2018Asturo Riley's poems invite you into his world. The form and content are new and fresh without being pretentious. There seems to be something in this work for kids who have never read a poem before, and professional poets alike. Really lovely.
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March 22, 2014Unfortunately I had a difficult time connecting to these poems.
September 5, 2014
The Seamus Heaney of the Carolina lowlands. Here is my review:
http://lippenheimer.wordpress.com/201...
http://lippenheimer.wordpress.com/201...
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews