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 Lunch and 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
