REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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I love poetry that seems to contain living slices of the life of a writer. Angela Voras-Hills’s Louder Birds is the kind of collection made up of tiny portals that take you places, showing you what Voras-Hills has seen, done, and felt. At once heartfelt and elegant, the writing in this collection isn’t afraid to be straightforward, which allows it to feel real:

“Days after my mom finishes radiation, she’s in Vegas

on a Harley. It’s 80 degrees, and she sends selfies

with cocktails in the sun.”

Sometimes a poetry collection will demand deconstruction in order to be enjoyed. That’s not the case here. Many of the poems here feel like short stories that bring to life a specific time, place, or individual(s). A grandpa lands a place on a lake. Someone uses a book to smash a centipede. The poet looks through a window at a bloodstain on the floor of an abandoned house. “Two foxes run circles/around the cement wall/of a reflecting pool.” These poems are small tales that are large in significance. The beauty of great poetry is that, much like a photograph, it can capture a moment in time and hold it there forever, a thing trapped in amber that can be shared with the world. Voras-Hills has a knack for trapping moments with words, and her talent is in full display here.

Louder Birds inhabits an interstitial space between the inner an outer worlds of the writer. The inner one drives the memories and forms the frames of each poem. The outer world provides a plethora of elements of cohesion, including water, snow, wood, trees, grass, flowers, and a collection of animals that includes bears, chipmunks, foxes, eels, worms, ants, an owl, a spider, and a decapitated rabbit:

“On the bike path, a bunny’s body and blood

where the head should be. Something

has torn off its foot, something has eaten

its heart, its entrails frozen in snow.”

Voras-Hills is aware of her body as part of this world, and her writing reminds us to pay attention, to live in the moment, to rejoice, to observe the small things and rejoice in their secret meaning. The poems in Louder Birds are beautiful chronicles that invite readers to recognize the transcendence of the commonplace. That alone should make you read it.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.