The poems in Singing Back the Darkness dare to feel. In his second full-length collection, Liles guides us into fraught spaces—from bar room to battlefield, schoolyard to interior recesses—to confront grief with what he’s proving to be characteristic insight, humor, outrage, and wonder. Always sincere, each poem offers the possibility of emerging from ruin both personal and collective with dignity if not hope intact. Truth wounds, then heals in these pages. Here is a poetry that sings reminder: Language remains our great means of redress in a heartbreaking world. |
