The Theory and Practice of Rivers

Filled with “moving water” and intuitive leaps, The Theory and Practice of Rivers is an elegy for Harrison’s sixteen-year-old niece. This new edition of The Theory and Practice of Rivers, by Jim Harrison, returns to print—as a stand-alone volume—a classic poetry title. In a heartfelt and powerful introduction, Rebecca Solnit calls this collection both elegy (inspired by the death of his sixteen-year-old niece) and “loose memoir” (filled with language that leaps intuitively across subjects, recalling various experiences, place, and memories). Beautifully adrift in the long poem sequence seated at the heart of this book, The Theory and Practice of Rivers is filled with “moving water, the search for consolation and meaning in the sublime rightness of wild landscape” (Outside). Harrison speaks to the rivers and leaps in all of us, leaving us profoundly changed.