The Small Nouns Crying Faith

Poetry. The first word in this new collection by Phil Hall is "raw" and the last word is "blurtip." Between these, many nouns cry faith within a hook-less framework that sings in chorus while undermining such standard forms and tropes as "the memoir," "genealogy" and "the shepherd's calendar." With a rural pen, these poems talk frogs, carrots, local noises, partial words, remnants, dirt roads, deep breath and hope: "my laboratory the moment / is accordion-shaped - cluttered - sopping / & not eternal."