Living in the sky - Softcover

Rivers, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1949229297 ISBN 13: 9781949229295

Publisher: Kelsay Books, 2019

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We begin Liz Rivers’ new book, kneeling with her in an unleashed canoe fishing the sky, its “vague dimensions, / once far off, now dripping” from our hands. Here is a poet who gently immerses us in the metaphysical, but it is a metaphysics always rooted in the particulars of this world, the “charities of rain,” “dictionary/of the gnats,” “dog tongue/slicking/your lips.” Living in the Sky has wonderful moments of humor, as revealed by several of its titles, “Mrs. Prometheus” and “Birth Canal is the First Place I Don’t Get Lost.” We explore our problematic sublunary life on earth – where even the Hate Has No Home Here sign gets vandalized on the front lawn—but again and again we return to the heavens…This is a prayerful book...

Christopher Bursk, author of The First Inhabitants of Arcadia

Elizabeth Rivers’ new book, Living in the Sky, galvanizes the immeasurable value of looking up — and around, making connections between the heavens and the earth of which we are sometimes enamored, sometimes fearful, often awed. Filled with celestial images (sun, moon, clouds, storms, “[God’s] commodious hammock swinging on heaven’s porch,”) and earthly delights (“strawberry blonde marigolds,” “tangy tomatoes,” “the charities of rain”), this book leads us back to element, the physicality of our nature married to the spirit that encourages a big Yes! To life. Poem after poem sustains the theme which is perhaps best expressed in the heart-lifting scenes of “Mowing Blind,” dedicated to her dear friend, the late poet, and musician, David Simpson.…

––Bernadette McBride, author of Whatever Measure of Light

If one could live in the sky, what would transpire? The concept “invites” the speaker, as well as the reader, to “unfold the immaculate / robe” and “frost me with sky - / tossed crystals, dazzle,” as we are dazzled by this luminous book. Through poem after poem, Rivers builds a case for “living in the sky”—with “singing / on the far side of the moon,” “sunlight standing on its hands,”...Her economic and intelligent language, and especially her no-nonsense realism, feature prominently in the book, especially in her attitude toward death. She maintains that we should “pack lightly, / carry no regrets” even as we “understand” our dying but still “don’t like it”… inspired, gifted poetry.

––Marie Kane, author of Beauty, You Drive a Hard Bargain

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