I skim-read this to be honest. The shorter poems were pretty good and interesting, there were some interesting themes and stories. It tried to be really grandiose and referencing the past and lots of people and relationships and mostly in the longer story like sections I got confused, I think it aimed for suspense or mysticism or something and it was just confusing. Most parts were pretty good, but I was bored for parts and ended up skimming through it. Maybe someone who likes this sort of poetry/book would like it a lot more.

I need to unpack this one a bit. It was both hard and rewarding to read such a narrative poetry collection. Hard because I wanted to read slowly and relish the poems but if I read too slow I would forget the characters. It covered a lot of time in this town of Cold Springs and it was great to see the change in the town and in the characters but because of the fragmented and poetic nature of the pieces it felt like I was missing out on a lot of information. I feel like it would've work better if either it was made more prose like and historical or was shortened and broken into more sizable and understandable sections.

Beautifully written, perfectly executed and masterfully planned. A joy to read! However, does somewhere loses its touch, nevertheless worth a full of concentration read.

Aesthetically, this kind of narrative poetry is far too dry, distant, and useless for my tastes. There is a clear project here that Jones executes with skill given his traditionalist talents but nothing in any of the poems or section feels like something that really matters, that pushes how you think or feel.