John Latta on Tim Atkins’ Folklore

It?s a skinned down elemental opening worthy of (reminiscent of) Cormac McCarthy (say, of Child of God). It echoes a ballad tradition (that ?Where you from boy,? particularly how it becomes a kind of refrain). If not strictly ballad, oral: both by the stutter-speech (relentlessly full-stop?d) and by the trailings-off (?clouds in the shape?) of the unspoken, the interrupt?d (mimicking with accuracy what speech is: a series of incompletions). Here?s (one thinks) a man on the run, hiding out (in a henhouse? a chicken shack?) after some poorly-defined altercation, discover?d. (A diligent reader norteamericano is likely to fetch a lexicon for ?didicoy?: a tinker, a gypsy. Likely to shrug at the precise whearabouts of Eardisley. Any reader is likely to suck up air sharply?wince in admiration

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