Death Row Row Row Your Boat - Kurt Luchs

This second full-length poetry collection from the author of Falling in the Direction of Up finds him diving deeply and with great assurance into perennial themes and concerns: life, love, death, time, the nature of consciousness and reality, the world around us and the many worlds inside us. He offers a plentiful variety of verses about love lost and won, intimate encounters with nature, the life of the spirit, and oblique insights into our current cultural moment. His voice is equally at home with lyrical free verse (the approach in most of these poems) and the occasional formalism.

The book is divided into three sections. The first, "Night Thoughts ' Death Songs," focuses on existential questions and includes elegies for the poets Robert Bly, Brett Foster, Adam Zagajewski and Charles Simic. The second, "Other Lives, Other Endings," contains mostly nature lyrics featuring all manner of creatures. Finally, "Mortal Loves, Tribes, Families" reflects on relationships-with lovers, family, friends and fellow citizens.