Dismantling the Hills Book

WINNER OF THE 2007 AGNES LYNCH STARRETT POETRY PRIZE

A book of poems that explore working-class, rural American life, in all its complication and contradiction.

Louis McKee - Library Journal

"If you took this road twenty years ago/you'd have found my father and me at mile marker four//bucking timber at a washed-out logging site,/the bone-picking privilege the companies grant to scavengers//to cut time with slash piles." McGriff's poems are lyrical celebrations of the Northwest wilderness, of the land, the small towns, and people. They capture in sharp language and enticing rhythm the beauty and workaday desperation of the place, as well as the spirit and resilience of the people. As the land is often scarred and wanting, so are those who spend their life there: "Tonya's leg pushes against me. She says, Think you'll leave this place/when you're dead? She's come to believe we'll return/as the stray dogs at the boat basin, screech owls, and dusty moths,//that we'll be recycled from our wrong and horrible selves/into the lives of flight and flame." Winner of the 2007 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, this is a powerful first collection of narratives with spark and intelligence, rich "with the dust of stars, the grain of timber,/the burls in the hearts of men." Highly recommended.