Overview

A searing, lyrical journey spanning three and a half decades of raw, intimate, and unflinching poetry. River Church: Selected Poems 1990-2025 by Kent Fielding is a fearless collection that traverses continents and inner landscapes-Siberia, Kentucky, the Pacific Islands, and the haunted corridors of memory. These poems confront the sacred and the profane, the tender and the brutal, all with Fielding's signature blend of dark wit, mythic vision, and working-class lyricism. This is a book for readers of contemporary poetry who crave emotional depth, narrative bite, and the wild honesty of lived experience. Through Fielding's voice, we encounter the beauty of coral reefs and the despair of addiction, the electric storm of a daughter's birth and the ghostly silence of a snowman's final breath. The result is a book at once haunted and deeply human, where tenderness survives even the worst betrayals. From the vivid realism of ""Coffee with Adele"" and ""Kansas City Airport"" to the mythic landscapes of ""The Goat Woman's Dream"" and ""River Church Cemetery,"" Fielding's poems transform trauma, loss, and longing into something fierce, poetic, and enduring.

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9798990754010

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Reviews

""Trust Kent Fielding to uncover the pathos of snowmen and the vitriolic jealousy experienced by the rain. That's just for starters. Then, hurt and want to erupt from the fissures deep within River Church's supplicants. Be they awake or asleep, members of the savage mob or victims of it, in Kentucky, Alaska, or the Marshall Islands, this book is their gothic hymnal. I am now afraid I will one day meet The Goat Woman and also, somehow, hopeful that I will."" --Sean Cole was the producer of the weekly radio program This American Life, and is the author of After These Messages (Lunar Chandelier 2022). ""A poetry road warrior, Kent Fielding is an enigma. Nearly four decades ago we launched a campaign to change the face of poetry, to birth a global literary renaissance. From the beginning, we worked around the clock: editing, publishing, producing events, promoting the arts around the world. For several years we home based in Louisville, Kentucky, then we went separate ways, Kent to Alaska, me to Iceland, both of us continuing to adventure on and on. And no matter where we lived or traveled, we kept writing. Travel is the best education. I have had the honor of watching Kent Fielding's writing develop and grow in the most surprising, even shocking ways. His work and his work ethic never cease to impress and amaze. His astonishing new book of poems, RIVER CHURCH, is an out of the blue masterpiece."" --Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate

Author Information

Kent Fielding is a teacher, coach, and poet - has taught in the Marshall Islands, at Jefferson Community College, University of Alaska Southeast, Mt. Edgecumbe, and Skagway High School. Author of a book of poetry, Chief Iffuccan, and a chapbook, The Revolution is About to Begin, his work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Asheville Poetry Review, The Jefferson Review, Pavement Saw, Modern Haiku, The Beat Scene, Frisk Magazine, Night Owl Narrative: A Cajun Mutt Rag, and Tidal Echoes, among others.

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