What Readers Think About riversongs

The poems in Anne Tibbitts’ debut collection riversongs, are about as varied in their subject matter and settings as they can be. For example, there are poems about elaborate dreams, a grandmother’s unfulfilled last wish, a circus elephant’s demise, and a married man’s old coat and locales that range from Australia and Okinawa to small town Missouri. [...] featuring Whitmanic catalogues that rival that poet’s ability to string together one startling, lyric image after another. [...] These poems are unfiltered, reliant on equal parts stinging honesty and lyric virtuosity. These poems, though a first collection, represent a long life of commitment; indeed the poet has risked it all: stability, comfort and even family, to remain wholly and holy on the altar of her poetic vision.

-Joe Benevento, author of The Cracker Box Poems

Surgeons should not operate on themseves and lawyers should not handle their own case. And poets are terrible reviewers of their own works. [...T]here are diamonds poking through the soil. The poems in this collection manage [...] to combine the ecstatic and the earthy. The ordinary becomes universal yet unique. Memories don’t haunt these pages like ghosts; they live in them like spirits.

Duane Vorhees, author of Between Holocausts and other books of poetry

What unites th[is] collection is a steadfast current of love, whether directed toward family bonds, friendships, or intimate partnerships now transformed by time. This love is never uncomplicated; instead, it reveals itself in fragments—moments of tenderness, of loss, of unspoken longing—that give the poems their depth and resonance [...,] allowing the reader to feel both the warmth of connection and the solitude—the quiet, emptiness [...] or the stillness that remains after something significant has happened.

These poems linger like echoes of the past, weaving love, loss, and reflection into verses that haunt and console at once.

Edward B. Davis, Ph.D., Emeritus Dean of the Social Science Division at Yuba College

As [editor and publisher of GloMag, a (mostly) online magazine, I’m very aware of [Anne’s] amazing craftmanship. Even while being receptive to discussion, each word and line and form is carefully chosen and placed[...]. Her poems are sometimes the dormant experiences that we take for granted, those fragrances from childhood and life that waft over in the breeze, awakening senses in us that we thought we’d long forgotten. [...] Her poems are characters whose little foibles are caught seamlessly and gracefully presented, giving us that little peek into their lives and soul. [...] Her poems are exploratory and toying with emotions that are on the brink of being bold declarations but smoothed over with great dexterity and finesse. [...] And maybe a little in contradiction to the general rule of detaching the writer from the writing, one does become aware of her own life, that she is someone who consciously steps out [of] her comfort zone to savour life’s complexities and beauty—that her own experiences are vast and varied. Even while not compromising on her feminine side, there is yet this wild side to her, and she can be expected to hold her own under trying circumstances.

[...] I would like to pick up a copy of Riversongs and settle down comfortably, arrange my cushions and blanket just so, sink deep into the bean bag with a bowl of soup on the side and lose myself in these delightful contemplations and engrossing presentations.

Glory Sasikala, poet, novelist, short story writer and Editor and Publisher of GloMag Online Poetry and Prose Magazine