The poems in this fine collection are as true as a river fork and as durable as the hills above. They are also, like the many people and voices here recalled, humble and hard-won. The grit and humor walk side by side with grief and spunk, but isn’t that what we ask of poetry, this lofty air? As it sails in the breeze of reflection and intellect, don’t we also require this ancient art to be human, to be fallible and clumsy and loving and real? This book fulfills those obligations and more. It also walks the poignant line of Time, both knowing and absorbing the fact that one age has unavoidably succeeded another—and yet these poems have hold of both, as if they are kin, and, of course, they are.

— Maurice Manning, Pulitzer Prize nominee and author of The Common Man

This may be a debut collection, but Woods is no novice to poetry. Each poem is a gem crafted by an experienced hand, strung together jewel after jewel.

— Darnell Arnoult, author of the poetry collection Galaxie Wagon