Drinking from the River: New & Selected Poems, 1975–2015

Every now and then, if you are very lucky, you will pick up a slim volume of poetry by a poet you’ve not encountered before and fall in love. I did. How I never ran across Chip Dameron before is beyond me. He’s been publishing poems for over forty years. This collection contains poems from 1975 to 2015. What may be most astonishing about it is that the early poems are every bit as beautiful and polished as the later poems. His descriptions are downright glorious from beginning to end, his word choices impeccable. But most of all he sets a mood that readers can steep in. With lines like “Malevolence bobs on the surface like a string of persistent buoys” or “until the lamplight flickered and failed and we drifted like leaves into the undulating waves of the night,” how can one not be transported to the places and times of which Dameron writes? He is a product of Texas, and that place, in all its varied landscapes and seasons, with all its shadows and radiance, with its wide array of flora and fauna, is the foundation of his work. Don’t miss this brilliant collection.