The bird is perched. The stone is placed. The books are open. Words float and settle; they roll onto the page as stones roll in the landscape. They invoke the event of themselves. Alice Attie s voice is exquisite and singular. She writes from thresholds where speech and silence are bound, from places where language extols its own effort.

Attie s inaugural poetry volume is a brilliant and delicate invitation to collectively bend into silence as we bend into words . Here, language and the ineffable inhabit the same liminal space, where words may both be and not be in an oscillation of possibility and wonder. As she observes the motions of her mind, Attie shapes and reshapes figures to form and reform the collage of her writing.

As we read "These Figures Lining the Hills," we enter an eloquent, philosophically poignant, space of reciprocity where together we slip into the folds of language. These pieces are dazzling tributes to a poetics of the moment for Attie s words are poised to take note of the smallest thing, for there is, she tells us, no beginning and no end to writing .

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