Reviews
Praise for The River You Touch Midway through The River You Touch, poet and naturalist Chris Dombrowski tells us, 'To truly fathom a river, is to know it from its headwaters to its mouth...' To truly fathom a life-one's place, community, family, history, purpose on earth-is the sacred pursuit of this moving and beautifully written memoir. Here is the story of a man attempting to reckon with his cultural inheritance, his vocation, his past, and his responsibilities to family, land, and history. Along the route, he continuously encounters reminders of his own mortal smallness and, simultaneously, the numinous interconnection of all beings. Like the river, Dombrowski's story is complicated and enlivened by all it touches, 'an extension of everything upstream and down'-from the joys, doubts, and terrors of parenthood; to the precarity of making a life in art; to the rivers and mountains that are both his source of sustenance and place of worship; and the fraught layers of histories that map over it all. By the end, I'd fallen hopelessly in love with Dombrowski's Montana, not just its rivers and mountains, but the unforgettable cast of characters that populate his world-from children who speak in beguiling riddles to crusty old hunters whose colloquial panache rivals the naughtiest Shakespeare. Dombrowski brings a near-religious attentiveness to the details of his world, both our wise guide and awe-struck fellow-passenger. -Lisa Wells, author of Believers With The River You Touch, Chris Dombrowski has established himself at the forefront of American writers of place. This beautiful, clear-eyed, tender memoir is as intimate as a love letter, brimming with wise observations on family, parenthood, home, duty, and passion. The Montana within these pages is wild and rugged, yes. But it is also as gentle as a cold stream running through your fingers or a child sleeping in your arms. I loved this book. -Nicholas Butler, bestselling author of Godspeed and Shotgun Lovesongs In the way a fable points us toward rightness, so The River You Touch leads us to a necessary truth: that deep knowledge and love of a place shapes us in all the ways we will need to survive. With poetry, vulnerability, and crisp storytelling, Dombrowski takes us into a wild, river-thrummed Montana, and into the stormswept territory of marriage and family. It's a journey with a guide who knows the country at a cellular level, and whose bafflement and wonder renews our own. The magic of the book is that I came away convinced that learning to love a trout, or an autumn snowfall, or a wolf crossing a river, would teach me to love a friend or a partner in pain-and so to love and be connected to all beings. Damn. -Peter Heller, bestselling author of The Dog Stars, The River, and The Guide Praise for Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World's Most Elusive Fish Dombrowski's writing exhibits a poetic sense of economy. There's a tremendous amount of information here on the geological, botanical, biological and human history of the region, but the author uses only what's necessary to the story and relates it in evocative, concise language that reminded me of Gary Snyder one minute and John McPhee the next. [...] Dombrowski's exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again--and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets. -John Gierach, Wall Street Journal Body of Water is about bonefishing, but it is also about ecosystem exploitation, class conflict, wealth inequity, race relations, Bahamian history, mentor-mentee relationships, nature as the catalyst for self-awareness, and more. [...] The lyrical narrative strikes a delicate balance between reflective memoir and reportage. -Minneapolis Star Tribune Body of Water is wonderful, an evocation of the why and not the how in angling. Dombrowski has a way of describing that which may have become prosaic for the seasoned angler--the terminal tackle, the fly cast--in new and illuminating ways. -Forbes Dombrowski elevates the fly-fishing-as-meditation narrative by the sheer fact that he's so damn good at writing about it. -Outside Rarely do cautionary tales dazzle like this. It's a credit to Dombrowski's prose, which torques and twists and glistens into view much like the bonefish itself. [...] By book's end, Dombrowski leaves readers with many lessons, thought this one most of all: whether on a skiff or in a book, the guide matters. And Dombrowski is the one you want. -Los Angeles Times Uncanny and moving. This book will not only make you change your vacation plans, it might make you change your life. A reverent, almost holy, book of angling lore. -Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red At its core, Body of Water is about our increasingly tenuous connection to nature, from a poet who understands the source of that strange and melancholic joy that we are blessed with only when we stand in wild places. -Steve Rinella, author of Meat Eater A lyrical, genre-defying tribute. [...] Drawing on Caribbean history and the evolution of fly-fishing, Dombrowski's foray into nonfiction proves thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming. -Publishers Weekly (starred review) A metaphor-laced meditation on the art and practice of fly-fishing, the social and economic history of the Bahamas, the evolution of archipelago geology and the chronicle of Dombrowski's personal struggle to juggle his fishing and poetry obsessions against the financial needs of his own family. [...] Fly-fishing mysticism at its best. -Shelf Awareness
Praise for The River You Touch A heartfelt memoir of life and fatherhood in Big Sky country . . . Through a collection of vignettes, the author shares his concerns for the environment, the effects of the appropriation of land from Native inhabitants, and the emotions the landscape stirs in him. 'The angler standing in the river is not so much absolved of time as disburdened of it, able to shirk its weight' . . . Nature lovers will be captivated by Dombrowski's lyrical descriptions of the land and its wildlife, while parents are sure to relate to his familial challenges and sacrifice. A beautifully and poignantly written tribute to a beloved landscape and its spirit. -Kirkus Reviews, starred review The River You Touch is a personal guide like no other . . . a lyrical, visually rich, once-in-a-lifetime river trip. . . . Packed with thought-provoking narrative that may guide you to being a better human. -Montana Quarterly An intimate collection of related vignettes that ruminate on an outdoor life along Montana's stunning rivers and [Dombrowski's] challenging interior struggle over providing a dependable living for his growing family . . . Populated by a panoply of gorgeous images-'I was nineteen-the Yellowstone flowing around my hips swept quicksilver-streaked beneath the vast moonlit snowfields of the Crazy Mountains'-this is a complex, candid meditation on parenting, fishing, writing, and living in a manner that will stir the blood and fire the intellect. -Booklist Nature writer Dombrowski evokes both wilderness splendor and the hardscrabble effort of living paycheck to paycheck in this exquisite work. In lyrical language replete with vivid imagery, Dombrowski reflects on his 25 years as a fly-fishing guide, his uncertainty over writing and poetry, his impending fatherhood and 'fear of ushering children into a periled world' . . . he renders his love of the natural world in incandescent prose: 'the land itself . . . a blessing, yes, but also a kind of passage, a shaft of fall light shone down on a trace path that leads out of a previously impenetrable wood.' Punctuated by the frank candor of a writer weighing sacrifice and art, this introspective memoir will hook fans of A River Runs Through It. -Publishers Weekly A lyrical exploration of a beloved place and lifestyle steeped in the natural world, by a writer for whom quality of life supersedes the need for financial security. Will appeal to readers who relish memoirs that skillfully intertwine nature, the American West, and fishing. -Library Journal In slow, eddying prose, [The River You Touch] mines an ordinary life for evocative reflections on family, friendship, and the meaning found in a rugged landscape . . . Suggesting that, like a river, a life well lived includes 'headlong shots through roaring box canyons' in addition to 'the hypnotic, elliptical movement of water running back on itself,' The River You Touch is a profound, moving memoir that contemplates the earth, family, and community in its tributes to the intimate beauty of western Montana. -Foreword Reviews Midway through The River You Touch, poet and naturalist Chris Dombrowski tells us, 'To truly fathom a river, is to know it from its headwaters to its mouth...' To truly fathom a life-one's place, community, family, history, purpose on earth-is the sacred pursuit of this moving and beautifully written memoir. Here is the story of a man attempting to reckon with his cultural inheritance, his vocation, his past, and his responsibilities to family, land, and history. Along the route, he continuously encounters reminders of his own mortal smallness and, simultaneously, the numinous interconnection of all beings. Like the river, Dombrowski's story is complicated and enlivened by all it touches, 'an extension of everything upstream and down'-from the joys, doubts, and terrors of parenthood; to the precarity of making a life in art; to the rivers and mountains that are both his source of sustenance and place of worship; and the fraught layers of histories that map over it all. By the end, I'd fallen hopelessly in love with Dombrowski's Montana, not just its rivers and mountains, but the unforgettable cast of characters that populate his world-from children who speak in beguiling riddles to crusty old hunters whose colloquial panache rivals the naughtiest Shakespeare. Dombrowski brings a near-religious attentiveness to the details of his world, both our wise guide and awe-struck fellow-passenger. -Lisa Wells, author of Believers Heartfelt, moving, and gorgeously written, The River You Touch is a love song to the rivers of Montana, a love song to a way of life. Dombrowski writes with tenderness and insight and with a deep, personal gratitude to the rivers that have taught him who he is--a husband, a father, a fisherman, a poet, a person who loves the earth as well as mourns it. What a tremendous achievement. -Emily Ruskovich, author of Idaho With The River You Touch, Chris Dombrowski has established himself at the forefront of American writers of place. This beautiful, clear-eyed, tender memoir is as intimate as a love letter, brimming with wise observations on family, parenthood, home, duty, and passion. The Montana within these pages is wild and rugged, yes. But it is also as gentle as a cold stream running through your fingers or a child sleeping in your arms. I loved this book. -Nicholas Butler, bestselling author of Godspeed and Shotgun Lovesongs In the way a fable points us toward rightness, so The River You Touch leads us to a necessary truth: that deep knowledge and love of a place shapes us in all the ways we will need to survive. With poetry, vulnerability, and crisp storytelling, Dombrowski takes us into a wild, river-thrummed Montana, and into the stormswept territory of marriage and family. It's a journey with a guide who knows the country at a cellular level, and whose bafflement and wonder renews our own. The magic of the book is that I came away convinced that learning to love a trout, or an autumn snowfall, or a wolf crossing a river, would teach me to love a friend or a partner in pain-and so to love and be connected to all beings. Damn. -Peter Heller, bestselling author of The Dog Stars, The River, and The Guide You won't soon read a more beautiful book, nor one so earthy, wise, delicious, and alive. This is not a book about fish or rivers or Montana or parenting. This is a book, to paraphrase another poet, plain and simple, to break open the frozen sea within. -Rick Bass Praise for Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World's Most Elusive Fish Dombrowski's writing exhibits a poetic sense of economy. There's a tremendous amount of information here on the geological, botanical, biological and human history of the region, but the author uses only what's necessary to the story and relates it in evocative, concise language that reminded me of Gary Snyder one minute and John McPhee the next. [...] Dombrowski's exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again--and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets. -John Gierach, Wall Street Journal Body of Water is about bonefishing, but it is also about ecosystem exploitation, class conflict, wealth inequity, race relations, Bahamian history, mentor-mentee relationships, nature as the catalyst for self-awareness, and more. [...] The lyrical narrative strikes a delicate balance between reflective memoir and reportage. -Minneapolis Star Tribune Body of Water is wonderful, an evocation of the why and not the how in angling. Dombrowski has a way of describing that which may have become prosaic for the seasoned angler--the terminal tackle, the fly cast--in new and illuminating ways. -Forbes Dombrowski elevates the fly-fishing-as-meditation narrative by the sheer fact that he's so damn good at writing about it. -Outside Rarely do cautionary tales dazzle like this. It's a credit to Dombrowski's prose, which torques and twists and glistens into view much like the bonefish itself. [...] By book's end, Dombrowski leaves readers with many lessons, thought this one most of all: whether on a skiff or in a book, the guide matters. And Dombrowski is the one you want. -Los Angeles Times Uncanny and moving. This book will not only make you change your vacation plans, it might make you change your life. A reverent, almost holy, book of angling lore. -Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red At its core, Body of Water is about our increasingly tenuous connection to nature, from a poet who understands the source of that strange and melancholic joy that we are blessed with only when we stand in wild places. -Steve Rinella, author of Meat Eater A lyrical, genre-defying tribute. [...] Drawing on Caribbean history and the evolution of fly-fishing, Dombrowski's foray into nonfiction proves thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming. -Publishers Weekly (starred review) A metaphor-laced meditation on the art and practice of fly-fishing, the social and economic history of the Bahamas, the evolution of archipelago geology and the chronicle of Dombrowski's personal struggle to juggle his fishing and poetry obsessions against the financial needs of his own family. [...] Fly-fishing mysticism at its best. -Shelf Awareness
Praise for The River You Touch: Learning the Language of Wonder and Home With The River You Touch, Chris Dombrowski has established himself at the forefront of American writers of place. This beautiful, clear-eyed, tender memoir is as intimate as a love letter, brimming with wise observations on family, parenthood, home, duty, and passion. The Montana within these pages is wild and rugged, yes. But it is also as gentle as a cold stream running through your fingers or a child sleeping in your arms. I loved this book. -Nicholas Butler, bestselling author of Godspeed and Shotgun Lovesongs Praise for Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World's Most Elusive Fish Dombrowski's writing exhibits a poetic sense of economy. There's a tremendous amount of information here on the geological, botanical, biological and human history of the region, but the author uses only what's necessary to the story and relates it in evocative, concise language that reminded me of Gary Snyder one minute and John McPhee the next. [...] Dombrowski's exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again--and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets. -John Gierach, Wall Street Journal Body of Water is about bonefishing, but it is also about ecosystem exploitation, class conflict, wealth inequity, race relations, Bahamian history, mentor-mentee relationships, nature as the catalyst for self-awareness, and more. [...] The lyrical narrative strikes a delicate balance between reflective memoir and reportage. -Minneapolis Star Tribune Body of Water is wonderful, an evocation of the why and not the how in angling. Dombrowski has a way of describing that which may have become prosaic for the seasoned angler--the terminal tackle, the fly cast--in new and illuminating ways. -Forbes Dombrowski elevates the fly-fishing-as-meditation narrative by the sheer fact that he's so damn good at writing about it. -Outside Rarely do cautionary tales dazzle like this. It's a credit to Dombrowski's prose, which torques and twists and glistens into view much like the bonefish itself. [...] By book's end, Dombrowski leaves readers with many lessons, thought this one most of all: whether on a skiff or in a book, the guide matters. And Dombrowski is the one you want. -Los Angeles Times Uncanny and moving. This book will not only make you change your vacation plans, it might make you change your life. A reverent, almost holy, book of angling lore. -Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red At its core, Body of Water is about our increasingly tenuous connection to nature, from a poet who understands the source of that strange and melancholic joy that we are blessed with only when we stand in wild places. -Steve Rinella, author of Meat Eater A lyrical, genre-defying tribute. [...] Drawing on Caribbean history and the evolution of fly-fishing, Dombrowski's foray into nonfiction proves thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming. -Publishers Weekly (starred review) A metaphor-laced meditation on the art and practice of fly-fishing, the social and economic history of the Bahamas, the evolution of archipelago geology and the chronicle of Dombrowski's personal struggle to juggle his fishing and poetry obsessions against the financial needs of his own family. [...] Fly-fishing mysticism at its best. -Shelf Awareness
Praise for The River You Touch With The River You Touch, Chris Dombrowski has established himself at the forefront of American writers of place. This beautiful, clear-eyed, tender memoir is as intimate as a love letter, brimming with wise observations on family, parenthood, home, duty, and passion. The Montana within these pages is wild and rugged, yes. But it is also as gentle as a cold stream running through your fingers or a child sleeping in your arms. I loved this book. --Nicholas Butler, bestselling author of Godspeed and Shotgun Lovesongs Praise for Body of Water: A Sage, a Seeker, and the World's Most Elusive Fish Dombrowski's writing exhibits a poetic sense of economy. There's a tremendous amount of information here on the geological, botanical, biological and human history of the region, but the author uses only what's necessary to the story and relates it in evocative, concise language that reminded me of Gary Snyder one minute and John McPhee the next. [...] Dombrowski's exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again--and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets. --John Gierach, Wall Street Journal Body of Water is about bonefishing, but it is also about ecosystem exploitation, class conflict, wealth inequity, race relations, Bahamian history, mentor-mentee relationships, nature as the catalyst for self-awareness, and more. [...] The lyrical narrative strikes a delicate balance between reflective memoir and reportage. --Minneapolis Star Tribune Body of Water is wonderful, an evocation of the why and not the how in angling. Dombrowski has a way of describing that which may have become prosaic for the seasoned angler--the terminal tackle, the fly cast--in new and illuminating ways. --Forbes Dombrowski elevates the fly-fishing-as-meditation narrative by the sheer fact that he's so damn good at writing about it. --Outside Rarely do cautionary tales dazzle like this. It's a credit to Dombrowski's prose, which torques and twists and glistens into view much like the bonefish itself. [...] By book's end, Dombrowski leaves readers with many lessons, thought this one most of all: whether on a skiff or in a book, the guide matters. And Dombrowski is the one you want. --Los Angeles Times Uncanny and moving. This book will not only make you change your vacation plans, it might make you change your life. A reverent, almost holy, book of angling lore. --Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red At its core, Body of Water is about our increasingly tenuous connection to nature, from a poet who understands the source of that strange and melancholic joy that we are blessed with only when we stand in wild places. --Steven Rinella, author of Meat Eater A lyrical, genre-defying tribute. [...] Drawing on Caribbean history and the evolution of fly-fishing, Dombrowski's foray into nonfiction proves thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) A metaphor-laced meditation on the art and practice of fly-fishing, the social and economic history of the Bahamas, the evolution of archipelago geology and the chronicle of Dombrowski's personal struggle to juggle his fishing and poetry obsessions against the financial needs of his own family. [...] Fly-fishing mysticism at its best. --Shelf Awareness Praise for Ragged Anthem: Poems 'I hoped for some last gesture beyond a handshake,' writes Chris Dombrowski in Ragged Anthem, a soulful book of longing that is as comic as it is reflective. These poems sing of humankind in need of something it can only seem to get from the natural world, and of how we won't get it until we begin to understand ourselves as natural as any tree or river. Or as Dombrowski himself says, 'Again / I took daybreak for granted, easy / as mistaking pinecone for wasp nest, / wasp nest for shed antler, antler / for branch.' Here, these so-called mistakes make for discovery that approaches the magic of revelation. --Jericho Brown 'It wearies one, the visionary mode,' Chris Dombrowski writes in his remarkably unweary new book of poems, Ragged Anthem. The anthem is ragged, to be sure, with the disillusion and tenderness that comes with age and with a closely attended wonder-at a son's words, a daughter's drawings, brook trout, swallow nest, the sound of the word swale. Dombrowski reminds us with the clarity of a mountain stream why poems matter. --Melissa Kwasny Here, Dombrowski quotes Roethke, another Michigan treasure: 'In a dark time, the eye begins to see,' and indeed these poems see the turmoil and resilient beauty of contemporary America, from 'rivers strewn with moonlight and discarded / shopping carts' to 'boulder-curled cataracts / pocked by sewers.' Even weeping, here, is the beginning of the ragged anthem we desperately need. --Diane Seuss These magnificent poems showcase Chris Dombrowski's numinous adoration of the beautiful and strange. Ragged Anthem is strung together from anthills and elk and geese-the text messages and decapitations that become our selves. From exquisitely reverential renderings of the natural world to the twinned experiences of love and loss, this is a superb collection, one to be savored. --Alex Lemon There are few poets whose voices resonate with such confidence that I'd follow them from a fabricated lunar calendar to a departmental meeting to a text message-but I couldn't help folding over the corner on every page until this collection became as dog-eared as a pointer on a duck hunt. 'I was a creature once,' Dombrowski says, and in his poems we are allowed to return to the creatures we all once were: vital and deeply rooted in a world that is happening not on a screen or around a board room table, but here and now and together. Dombrowski finds the heart in the hurt thing, the burnt thing, the thing with the broken wing, the thing that doesn't know it wants to be loved until it is. And his speaker-the self-proclaimed 'poet laureate of boot slush'-vows 'to someday see / the world as the world, not a caption on my life.' It makes sense to fear for our lives in the world we live in, surrounded by our own madness and the kinds of sadnesses that are passed down from one generation to the next. But Dombrowski begs us to love each terrifying moment. And in his poems, I do. This is a book to hold close. --Keetje Kuipers Praise for Earth Again: Poems As I read and reread these urgent, burning poems, I found myself underlining and starring and scribbling down not only kneebuckling images and turns of phrase, but commandments and questions to live by. I wept reading this book. A holy book. --Joe Wilkins, Orion Not just for nature lovers, Earth Again is one of the most beautiful books of poetry I have read in years. Musically, deftly, sharply, it deals with birth, sex, death, and so much in between, with a light touch that includes comedy, fantasy, satire, somehow magically in the service of deep meaning, deep feeling. Dombrowski is heir to Galway Kinnell, writing of the everyday-unforgettably. --Alicia Ostriker Earth Again is an arresting, beautiful collection of poems. Chris Dombrowski is musical and intellectual in equal measure, and the poems here are memorable in every way-surprising and strange, moving and alarming, delightful and frightening. This is important new work. --Laura Kasischke Chris Dombrowski descends from the best of our nature poets: John Haines, Jeffers and Wordsworth. Earth Again is a lovely, lovely book. --Dorianne Laux Memory should not be called knowledge, Keats wrote, and yet in Chris Dombrowski's patient hands, the memory of the natural world is knowledge indeed. This is a generous, clear-eyed, lyricism. The wisdom of one who sees a flying object and says it could be a helicopter or an archangel. Beautiful poems. --Ilya Kaminsky Praise for By Cold Water: Poems A wonderful book of poems. I read it several times, utterly engrossed in its natural imagery, the grace in which the process of revelation tells us what we didn't know, describes what we never noticed. --Jim Harrison Intimates of wasp nests and barbed wire, of mountains' minerality and the light sequestered inside a horse's mane, Chris Dombrowski's poems word the world--and their reader--into largeness, with specificity, tenderness, and passion. --Jane Hirshfield As we say of a car, it has clean lines; or of an ant's eyes that they are closely engaged; the way we exclaim of an image that it bridges stars, Chris Dombrowski's poems ennoble their page. --William Gass To stand upright and see the eye ascend: this is Dombrowski's core proposal. In By Cold Water location beautifully becomes both virtue and task of virtue. These poems are truly afoot with their vision. --Donald Revell
