Silas House is a southern institution, and his first collection of poetry is heartbreaking in all the best ways. Youd be hard-pressed to find anyone who loves the South more while continually working to understand its history and untangle its present.Jason Isbell, Grammy-winning singer and songwriter
An author I reliably depend on to represent our home with respect, beauty, and authenticity. I love the sense of pride that comes through in so many of these poems.Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead
"I never met a Kentuckian who wasn't either thinking about going home or actually going home: Ive read that on more than one poster back home, and if youre kin to the land and the people there, then, well, you know. But what I didnt know until reading Silas Houses poems was just how that aching lonesome began, even in childhood as I, too, was already grieving the passing of all I knew / and loved. Harder still is the solastalgiathat kind of homesickness while still at homethat grows as you grow up, or as he puts it, not homesickness but timesickness, grieving a home lost to years as well as to floods, an Appalachia washed away by thoughtless development and acculturation alike. All These Ghosts then is a kind of elegy, but like any lament worth its salt, its equally praise songto soup beans and cornbread, to barefooted nights loud with insects, to those who have carried us through all that loss, andjust as Silas has done for me though this joyful, tender collectioncarry us still.Nickole Brown, author of Fanny Says
Throughout this marvelous collection House brings a finely tuned and thoughtful seeing to every poem. As he describes a first touch of hands with a friend who never came out, we witness behind the green curtain of a waterfall a small moment / of ecstasy akin to drowning. Such close attention is as perfect as the Hopkins poem to which House pays tribute in his epigraph.
I was not surprised to find this acclaimed novelist spinning narrative poems that enthrall, enchant, and sometimes break your heart as in Behold This Dreamer where the assault of a gay man is retold with stunning veracity and conviction. There are lyrical poems as well, possessing the same close attention to place and character found in all his work, thus making this a supremely impressive collection.
In another poem we read: Come here, and rest. Let me help you. These poems most certainly will do just that and more. I can only give thanks we have as fine an artist as Silas House to share his wisdom in poems of such beauty and power.Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of West Virginia and author of Dispatch from the Mountain State
Early in Silas Houses poetry collection All These Ghosts, the landscape is set so beautifully, so skillfully, so convincingly, that I carried the Kentucky mountains and its people with me as I turned every consequent page, feeling the accumulation of love, and loves losses, as if watching a wild onion grow, that ancient symbol of complicated but natural love. There is Wordsworthian eloquence in Silas Houses impressive and gorgeous poetry debut. What a gift to readers everywhere.Kathleen Driskell, Kentucky Poet Laureate 202526 and author of Goat-Footed Gods: Poems
To read this book is to be carried along by story and song, by ferns and dogs and water and language. This is my tongue for you, / whispering our history: words words words, House assures the reader, and even as these poems grieve over the death of loved ones, over environmental devastation, over timesickness, over our countrys embrace of fascism, they also ground the reader in a deep and abiding love of that place, of kin, of the little fire that lights the hearts of all the everyday people who / keep the engine of the world / running. All These Ghosts is deeply Appalachian in its plainspoken honesty, its heartrending use of narrative, and its subtle use of complex form. Do not truck in empire, it advises. After all, God lives in between / the pages of books. In the mountains there is a secret cathedral / made of wildness.Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come From Is Gone
