River Writing An Eno Journal [Paperback]

These poems are the waves emanating from the gravitational fall of my runs by the Eno river, writes James Applewhite, and other travels, into a self I could not otherwise know. They are my repetitive song of belief in the possibility of presence in language.

From Observing the Sun :

On a bank overlooking the Eno,
I feel us as lightly aligned
As heads of the Queen Anne's lace,
Their congregation of angles.
Red sun, dilated, has us all
In its sights.
Against its horizon,
I spread my arms like a road sign
To mark earth where we are.

Originally published in 1988.

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River Writingis an extraordinary journal of a poet's intimate encounter with a landscape in which the self can temporarily abandon itself. In this setting, nature becomes a text, a language of past, present and future. Applewhite reads that text for us with enormous empathy and by ideal light. Lisel Mueller James Applewhite'sRiver Writing: An Eno Journalseems to me one of the few authentic and strong American poetic sequences of his generation. Applewhite has found his true subject as a poet, and has developed a stance and style wholly adequate to the philosophical and spiritual reach of his poignant concerns. Harold Bloom