Field Music: Poems

A collection of poetry from the 2019 winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Rosanna Warren

In her remarkable and assured debut, Alexandria Hall explores the boundaries and limits of language, place, and the self, as well as the complicated space between safety and danger, intimacy and isolation, playfulness and seriousness, home and away. With a keen eye for the importance of place, Hall shows us daily life in rural Vermont, illuminating the beauty and difficulty inherent in the dichotomies of human language and experience.

Incisive and tender, Field Music is a thoughtful and alert collection from a major emerging voice.

This unflinching collection finds poetry in the stark contrasts of a Vermont landscape:

• Nature Poetry: Where summer meadows are inflamed with goldenrod and the smell of skunk and lilacs hangs in the night air.
• Rural Life: Step into a world of dirt roads, dairy farms, and whispered family histories, where beauty is a battlefield and survival is an art.
• Complex Family Dynamics: A daughter reckons with a vulnerable and sometimes violent father figure, exploring the complicated space between love and damage.
• Atmospheric Verse: Lyrical, raw, and tender poems that capture the feeling of being both at home and far away, navigating the boundaries between intimacy and isolation.