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Combining an investigation into the mysterious circumstances of his brother’s death with a headlong rush into mourning, Tim Liardet invents the pugilistic lyricism of The Storm House…[he] crosses a tone of bewildered longing, (think of  Tennyson’s “an infant crying in the night/with no language but a cry”) with brutally riveting imagery, like the flayed flesh of Francis Bacon’s portraits, and slams through a series of gripping lyrics toward the finale, the restless thirty-two-sonnet title sequence. Remembered incidents mix with “deleted scenes” to generate torrents of extreme feeling—the storm—that are framed by the structure of a family—the figurative house—left with its metaphorical roof torn off … What happened? might be the central question of all poetry that relies on memory—and what drives the thrillingly tumultuous Storm House is that the poet will never find out.

| Molly Peacock, Poetry Review