River of Light

"River of Light: A Conversation with Kabir" is a book-length poem that takes the reader on a week-long raft trip down a wild river in southcentral Alaska. Regional wildlife inhabit the poem s world, and the river s shifting landscape energizes and enriches the meditative mood as the river s waves and currents influence the shaping and pacing of its lines. Because the raft trip took place in 2003 during the second Iraq War, war is on the narrator s mind; but the trip is a spiritual journey as well, since the poem incorporates commentary by the fifteenth-century Indian mystic poet Kabir, who serves as a kind of mentor for the poem s narrator. This volume includes artwork by the distinguished Alaska artist Kesler Woodward. Appropriately, the artist, who participated in the original raft trip, appears in the poem. "