The poems of GLORY RIVER, Huddle's sisteenth book, pit precise observation, extravagant language and humor against despair in an attempt to find a way to live in a century when the values of the past are dissolving and those of the future are frightening. The collection presents a sequence of exceptional tales about an imaginary hamlet in the mountains of Virginia where residents are rough, crude, and full of fight, but eager to tell their stories, "to explain how / in that place they had become the people / they were." A second series of poems explore modern life, examining subjects as diverse as memory, family, art, politics, and pain.