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“Western's search for souls has poetic depth and reach as well. In fact, it has incredible reach, over millennia.”
– Anastasia Hobbet, author of Small
Kingdoms and The Pleasure of Believing.
“But in the end, I love these poems most for the life that they preserve. Reading them is like meeting my farming ancestors who died (partly because of the brutality of rural life) before I was born. I read A Random Census of Souls a month after I read Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, and both books had a similar effect on me. I fell in love with their musicality and lyrical language. But at the same time, I was haunted by how much difficulty humans have endured, especially as they settled new places; the poem “Coalwater” reminds us: “Newcomers thought they were taming this land, but it, in fact stalked them, biding its time for the moment of greatest vulnerability—at the cusp of hope—that moment when they would give in to their greatest garrisoned dreams, the avaristic fantasies of their crushed forefathers, whispering not to let this chance pass them by.” These books left me awed by the fact that humans are still here and touched by the intimate moments of tenderness that both books preserve in their pages.”
– Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Rattle
A Random Census of Souls
