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Days Like These
by Robert Riche
First Edition: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-935514-01-5
104 pages ~ 71 poems
Price: $12.71
Plain View Press
PO Box 42255
Austin, Texas 78704
plainviewpress.net
pk@plainviewpress.net
512 ~ 441~2452

These new poems by Robert Riche are a delight - not just because they
welcome and invite the reader inside, but they reach out with humanity,
sometimes with sadness, other times with rollicking good humor and wit.
They do not bore or insult the reader with self-indulgent ostentation. They
show depth of understanding that encourages the reader to see and feel
things he or she might not otherwise have noticed. The collection is varied,
encompassing nature, mortality, the grief of warfare, and the ordinary
events of "days like these." A book that is highly recommended by other
poets and reviewers.

In Days Like These, Robert Riche takes on the big topics: life, death, work,
and love. In these poems, love’s tectonics shift under our feet, a butterfly
almost misses the music’s end, a shooting star falls into a body bag, and
the whole assembly-line world is illumined with humor and insight. These
poems stun, startle, resonate, and warm the heart’s many rooms.
Rachel Dacus, Author of Earth Lessons and Femme au Chapeau

These poems by Robert Riche have a hospitable spirit. They range to the
dark end of experience without denying hope, and to the light side
without venturing into self-congratulatory hijinks. I’m charmed by the
gentle humor that emerges from time to time. Just often enough, the
images spring to life in an arresting demonstration of careful observation.
Take this, from Rhododendrons, whose winter leaves are described as
“huddled together/ in clumps, like umbrellas/ furled and stored until
spring.” Read and enjoy!
Will Walker, Author of Wednesday after Lunchand the chapbook,
Carrying Water. Former editor of The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal

Written from the wide end of the telescope, these poems look down the
decades, spanning a lifetime to embody a range of experience rich with
mature empathies. And, like the process of aging itself, they ain’t for
sissies. What readers will not find in this book is self-pity or sentiment.
Instead, Riche’s laser focus on tiny details alchemizes daily existence and
somehow consecrates the moments of each day we have left. “They
come, these gifts,” we are told in The Red Leaf, and this book is surely
one of them. Rebecca Foust, Author of All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song and
God, Seed: Poetry & Art About the Natural World

I finished your book this evening. It is a gift of image and power. Your
poems have graced my life, my reading. I delight in your musings on deer
and dogs, winter, a gecko, and Ginsberg. Thank you. Bless you.
Ira Joe Fisher, Author of Some Holy Weight in the Village Air and Songs
from an Earlier Century

From the Book:

44 Hot Spots
by Robert Riche

The New York Times recommends
44 hotspots throughout the world
that I should visit before I die,
A dozen years ago I tangoed
on the beach at Ipeanema (number 31).
This morning my back signalled
I might not make it to the bathroom.

“Osteoarthritis,” my doctor tells me,
after shining a light in my eyes,
peering down my throat,
probing my ears, and listening to my heart.
He advises against
stressful physical activity.
Which rules out 43 of the 44 recommendations.

One I might consider
is a ten-mile drive north
next fall to contemplate the autumn leaves
in fervid color
before they drop to the ground


 

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