Charactery collects poems written over two decades and explores mortal reckoning in Appalachia, nature and place, childhood and family, mysticism and romance. Ruminations on memory and the legendary ways we age, these fables seek a mercurial spirit of truth.

The book's tripartite constellations are an alphabet for the imagined self. Prosodic expressions are various—you’ll find both nonce form and measured lyric, blank verse, pantoum and ballad, narrative and rhyme. The horn is plentiful: original paintings and flourishes by the poet adorn the volume. Charactery attempts to engage and delight the reader.

Benjamin Pryor’s impressive linguistic and formal range often brings a whiff of high art to the party as he forcefully limns the beauties and hardships of the quixotic land that has powerfully contributed to the formation of the poet’s family and character. Hardscrabble, luminous, tender, and challenging all at once, the face of this living, breathing genius loci is outlined in the distinctive language of a son of this land whose ear is attuned to the loveliest and sometimes harshest of cadences. —Sidney Wade