Plain spoken poems, many written in the vernacular of the subject, about the people of a remote small town. At first I thought they were random, but then I noticed they seemed to connect, sometimes loosely sometimes closely, one to the next. Taken together, they tell people's stories, some funny, some sad, some heartbreaking. There's a forty-page section that seems to turn into some kind of parody of a nativity play that's quite funny, and made up of the same characters as the rest of the book. I found the last section of the book to be especially moving, as it had a stronger sense of a story being told, and coming to an end. Very different from his other books, and overall an extraordinary piece of sustained writing. The copy I have is the first edition, and there is a revised edition that I'm now curious about--ie, did he change things or just add some more? I may have to track down a copy and see. ( )