Torch River

By Elizabeth Philips

"Beneath these sensually charged images lies a complex interrogation of the paradox of nature."--Quill and Quire

In this stunning new collection, Elizabeth Philips takes us down into the swirling core of planetary energies, the central mystery of life itself. Sexual love, the wilderness, the births and deaths that connect them, the breathing and the not-breathing that connect birth and death, the interior wilderness of desire and the sensual love of wild things, of trees, earth, water--these are Philips's themes and subjects, rendered in a language of tremendous immediateness and authority. These are poems that will take your own breath away, that will give it back to you bigger, deeper than you imagined possible.

"Who's to say this life isn't the eternal life?
The no-time, the hover between in-
and exhale -- both wellspring
and spur -- is the essence of the extra strength
you use to loosen the screw that holds down
everything,
or this morning, the heft I need
to shuttle from boulder to boulder
over the slump of rock meant to keep the riverbank
from moving."

--From "Breath"

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1894078578
• ISBN13: 9781894078573
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 8.6"