The Theory & Practice Of Rivers And New Poems

This collection of poems, first published in 1990, is built around an elegy written after the death of the poet's teenage niece. Rather than a single sustained lament, the poems move loosely across memories, places and encounters, drifting from one subject to another the way water moves. The title poem's wild rivers and landscapes become a way of thinking about sorrow, consolation and the constant motion that shapes a life. The book is short and personal, part poetry and part memoir.