* An ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Receiving said copy in no way influenced my opinion of this book*

This was my first read by Alexandria Hall and I am happy to say I hope it isn't my last. Hall has a way of writing that is deep and soul punching. Their words are so expressive that even when they don't come right out and say it, I still fully understand what they mean, something I struggle with a lot when reading poetry. We got a glimpse into their life in these beautiful and wordy fragments. And while their life wasn't the most beautiful, they way they tell their story is.

I truly enjoyed this first book of poems by Alexandra. The raw energy of her language and depicted landscapes are incredibly appealing. It is very mature first collection and deserving award winner.

Alexandra Hall is a poet we will hear more from in the coming years. Field Music is a lovely if somewhat uneven collection that explored rural life, the meaning of place, and the resonances of love and isolation. Recommended.

Alexandra Hall is absolutely a poet to watch. Her poetry is vivid and her words a beautiful.

I think some poems fell more flat as it looks like she is still continuing to find and grow her voice as a post, however, that did not stop me from absolutely devouring this book of poems. She piles so many ideas on top of each other, often times that can get meddled and lost, but here it is beautifully done.

Interesting and well-written; Hall's use of place throughout was a good theme. I enjoyed this collection.

What a gorgeous, lush collection. Each poem moves like a breeze and there were so many lines that made me pause and stare out the window. Hall's debut is at once aching and sexy, grieving and quiet. I love the way Hall builds her landscapes, how quick flashes of image, like a robin's egg, act as startling anchors, how certain lines drop to wet the heads of the lines beneath them.

In the park by the falls, I watched a man / eating. Between his legs / his dog waited for a scrap. To feed is to care, / not to crave, or carve.

What a stunning book. I can't wait to read and re-read it again and again.

Today I am #reading: Field Music by Alexandria Hall (@alexandriakhall). The imagery evoked through these poems transport you to a song of desire, wonder and at times a profound loneliness. Each poem makes you feel the moment through the reliance of place, with lines that will leave you in awe.

This book was so incredibly beautiful. I loved the approach to setting. Each poem set up a gorgeous landscape that intertwined between rural and urban life and built out a universal family. While it didn’t feel like every single poem was connected, I never found myself disliking the flow; it continued on smoothly and effectively. I loved this collection!

This is a uniquely wonderful collection of poetry. I've only just started reading poetry about nature and this was a great one that connects to the rural American (farm) experience. Some of the poems felt a little disconnected but I don't believe it took away from this collection at all.

Poet Alexandria Hall's first full book of poetry brings rural American farm experiences to life with vivid, sensual descriptions of the natural world and a person's place in it. The most effective poems convey hunger and yearning, pain and intimacy through the use of language that pulls relentlessly at the reader's imagination. Some poems seem to be a jumble of unrelated images and cultural references that remain too disconnected at the end, leaving this reader to wonder how it all fit together.

I look forward to reading more of her work as Alexandria Hall develops her poetic voice. For now, this volume remains an interesting and sometimes luminous addition to my poetry collection.

Alexandria Hall is a poet to watch. She brings a nicely postmodern sensibility to her poems; just look at this set of citations for her poem 'On Art':

"'On Art' borrows bits of language from Rilke's *Letters to a Young Poet.* 'Achy Breaky Heart,' written by Don Von Tress and performed by Billy Ray Cyrus, Keat's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and a letter from Keats to Benjamin Bailey, AC/DC's 'You Shook Me All Night Long,' and 'Shake, Rattle, and Roll' by Jesse Stone a.k.a Charles E. Calhoun."

But at the same time her poems are full of emotion and longing and loss and anger and heartbreak and lust, such as this from 'Cowbird':

"All of this damage is already done:
the meadows inflamed and gone blonde with rash goldenrod. Nothing ever stays
where it ought: runoff dragged into the river
by summer rains from s***-covered fields - my thickly perfumed Vermont. The morning

glories creep up the shafts of the garden
vegetables, their seductive curls choking out my small plot. Sometimes we can't see
the dangers we feed, that we nurture,
like the warbler who cares for the cowbird planted in her nest"


Holy cow. Poems like this, and the poems memorializing her redneckish dad moved me. These poems are about combinations, or high and low culture, of urban and rural, of two bodies coming together in the summer heat separated by culture and language, of reconciling the nature and nurture that combined to create you, of reconciling the difference inside you. This isn't a perfect volume of poetry; some of the poems felt a little forced in voice or composition (like, unfortunately, 'On Art' whose notes I showed above), but the talent on display here in the best poems is worth your time.

I receive a digital galley of Field Music in exchange for a fair review. In her first book of poetry, the 2019 winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Rosanna Warren, there is evidence of a very skilled poet, but who has yet come into a consistent voice. Her best poems are written in a straight forward, narrative way that slowly build accretive details in an assured and confident manner that are masterful. Take for example the start of the poem “The Lake House”— “Ferrisburgh keeps nothing but the smell of skunk and lilacs/and the two lines of the headlights swimming/over the dirt road like sturgeon under the water.” Another poem, “Fishing,” describes her father baiting the hook for her (“...I didn’t want to bait the hook so he did it for me. It must/have been like a prick in a soft grape, a thumbtack through a baby’s/finger.” This is a description that highlights the benefit of hearing from a young poet using objects like a grape and thumbtack, whereas an older, more experienced poet probably would have missed the objects of childhood. There is evidence of this empathy and understanding in many of Hall’s poems along with some James Wright-like harsh beauty: “The peonies/glutted and collapsed on the driveway in June./ I am undone, not by grief, but abundance. (Having Been)”

It is therefore unfortunate that several poems told from a “slant-like” perspective are less successful. Here is the title poem, “Field Music,”—“Wringing out the wind chimes, the night leaves/a hole for a spotlight and my hands callous/over the goat’s singing. Somebody killed/my cat, not in the way Dad made the sheep/click. You know, I’ve got half a mind to halve /you, hot as a Salamander, foul as a skidsteer.” There is not coherence in the slanted perspectives Hall puts in this poem (and others) that although the reader can follow the logic of the poem to its conclusion, it comes across as gimmicky in my opinion. Here is another example in the poem “On Art,”—“Art is beautiful. What is beautiful is true. When the imagination/ seizes it, you should never put a spoon in its mouth. It is nice to be/stirred, but alarming to be shaken. You shook me all night long. I/ said shake, rattle, and roll. This is a test of the emergency broadcast/system. This is a false alarm, This is a downright lie.”

Although a flawed first book, Hall has an abundance of talent and I eagerly look forward to her next book.

This poetry collection was uniquely filled with rural tension, using farm-like metaphors in a way I've never heard done so lyrically, with so much hunger. While the jarring shifts between lines took time to get used to, the deeper darker elements of the pieces shone through. "Home / is where the mail goes," the narrator says in "Walking in Reverse," and we can relate. "Practice Test for Insatiable Loneliness" is a multiple choice test with no answer key. There is a simplicity in how harsh and violent bodies are described, again mirroring the mentality of farm life. I got a bit lost in the abstract jumbling of pieces like "Contrition," but appreciated the idea of confusion, embraced the uncertainty of what I was supposed to understand.. "On Art" and "Return" were definitely favorites in the collection because of the connections with past artists combined with a shared longing. The important people in these stories are nameless and yet they make crucial decisions, life-altering mistakes over and over. This allows us to seep into the stories and make the characters our man we love, our mother, our baby girl. Fullness, emptiness, everything between the two - these lines ache along this chasm.