Every Sound Is Not a Wolf

Alberto Ríos

Alberto Ríos’s Every Sound Is Not a Wolf evokes and awakens the senses—the smell of herbs, “the geckos at their mysterious work.” Even silence grows loud and expansive in its stillness. Told entirely in couplets, and with remarkable lucidity, Ríos balances the harmonies and disharmonies found throughout all of existence—between people and the natural world, between life and death, between spirit and body, between borders real and imagined. What does it mean for a body to house two languages? And what is an imaginary line between countries? From backyard to Sonoran desert, from mining town to river, this collection journeys the human experience, through grief and joy, tuned to the “small buzzing of a live world.” Ríos asks us to feel the connective electric pulse between all things, to find newness, musicality, and beauty in the mundane. That the world keeps moving forward, this is miracle enough.

Paperback: $17.00 list price

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ISBN: 9781556597114

Format: Paperback

Quietude

I have listened for what makes no sound,
Trying not to mistake it for silence.

This quiet is louder than anything
I have heard noise make.

Listen, if you can.
Nothing makes no sound.

It is long in its making where noise is fast.
It is slow in its unmistakable intensity.

I have worked all my life to hear it
As one might listen in the dark for a wolf.

Every sound is not a wolf—but one.
Every sound is not a breath stopped—but one.

I have listened, hoping not to hear
What wants not to be heard.

About the Author

Alberto Ríos, Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate and a recent chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, is the author of twelve collections of poetry, most recently, Not Go Away Is My Name, preceded by A Small Story about the Sky, The Dangerous Shirt, and The Theater of Night, which received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other journals, he has also written three short story collections and a memoir, Capirotada, about growing up …

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“Poet, shortstory writer, and memoirist Ríos prods the soundscape of the Southwest, forging deliberate and attentive paths in poems composed of couplets . . . Ever a poet of calculating purview, Ríos revels in the present, even as he casts a wary eye and ear forward: ‘The future will speak our words. / But there is another language ahead.'”—Diego Báez, Booklist

“A sense of amplitude and aggregation permeates Alberto Ríos’ new collection, Every Sound Is Not a Wolf. . . . These capacious poems, written almost entirely in couplets, make room for the memories of loved ones, childhood experiences, sensory perceptions, scenes and situations, insight and bewilderment. . . . A generous, optimistic book.”—Lorna Knowles Blake, Hudson Review

“One of our funniest writers and one of our most socially astute writers as well.”—Mark Athitakis, KJZZ Phoenix