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If I Didn’t Love the River

By (author): Robert Priest

In this virtuoso display of sonnets, free verse, prose poems, villanelles, ghazals, and aphorisms, People’s Poet Robert Priest makes it clear why the Pacific Rim Review has called him “surely the most imaginatively inventive poet in the country.” A profound meditation on love, death, sex, and sickness, If I Didn’t Love the River speaks directly to the polarizations of our time. Priest’s mastery of dark satire, lyric ebullience, erotic verse, and the pithy maxim is as gratifying as it is unique and will appeal to the yearning for poetry, which so often goes unsatisfied in the reading public. No emotional territory — from angst, anger, anguish, and despair to whimsical delight — is off-limits here. Intent on releasing reverberations from the full depths and heights of what it is to be human, this is Robert Priest at his protean best.

AUTHOR

Robert Priest

Robert Priest’s words have been debated in the legislature, posted on buses, quoted in the Farmers’ Almanac, and turned into a hit song. His book Reading the Bible Backwards peaked at number two on the Canadian poetry charts, outsold only by Leonard Cohen. He lives in Toronto, ON.


Reviews

“There are few poets who can articulate love, loss and the political like Priest. And certainly not in one book. The core of his work is to make connections, to underscore the way words echo other words and how inhuman affections and the need for justice form the basis for human bonds.” — Marrow Reviews blog


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Excerpts & Samples ×

Love Has Nothing to Do

Love has nothing to do with the stars
except that I see them as symbols of distance
and love can be distant

It has nothing to do with rivers
but I see the river staying and going
and I remember that love leaves and remains

Love is not much swayed by the moon
but who can view the moon
and not think of love’s satellite tendencies
its shadowy diminishments

True fire — the flame is not love
but in its dance, in the light it sheds
we see what we become
when love is in us

If I Didn’t Love the River

If I didn’t love the river
how could I say I love you
If I didn’t wish for the world to thrive
If I didn’t work to change minds
that wouldn’t be love
I love you because I love tomorrow
and I want to keep it just a day away forever
If I saw hunger and didn’t dream of a feast
If I didn’t dream of children well-nourished
what would nourish my love
What would my longing for peace grow fat on
My love of justice is all wound up in my love for you
It wouldn’t be love if I didn’t love creatures running free
if I didn’t support the right of others to love
It wouldn’t be love if I gave away my voice
so others could add it to the mob
There has to be work to it, there has to be vision
If I didn’t love the scorned, the othered
If I didn’t love the children of war
how could I truly say I love anyone

Reader Reviews

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Details

Dimensions:

136 Pages

Published:

September 20, 2022

Publisher:

ECW Press

ISBN:

9781778520501

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Canadian

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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