New book

We are thrilled to announce the pre-publication sale of our next title, LIFE LIST: Poems, by Marc Beaudin. Order early and save 10% off the cover price, plus be among the first to receive this beautiful collection. Expected in your mailbox by mid-December. Find it here: https://www.riverfeetpress.com/books

Life List, by Marc Beaudin, is a collection of 74 poems that explores the poet's question, "What is the soul if not the sum on the flights of a thousand birds?" Arranged like a field guide, the book is divided into regional sections with each poem featuring a different bird selected from Beaudin's own life list (currently at 359 species). As he writes in his author's note: "For many years, crows, herons and other avian species have flown through my poetry, adding their voices and flashes of light to my vain attempts to render in language the precarious circumstances of being alive." The book includes monotypes by Montana artist Storrs Bishop, and features an introduction by J. Drew Lanham author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.   Beaudin is a poet, theatre artist, naturalist, bookseller, Ulysses-junkie, jazz-head, social anarchist and vagabondaoist currently living in the writer’s haven of Livingston, Montana. He is the author of a hitchhiking memoir, Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals, a poetry collection, The Moon Cracks Open, a novel, A Handful of Dust, and several poetry chapbooks and plays. Despite the available evidence, he believes the Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D is more powerful than all the guns, smokestacks and coal trains in the world.    Early reviews: “ Life List is a deftly woven catalogue of human experience through the keen observations of birds and landscapes. Beaudin masterfully translates the mysterious language between magpies and mountains and weaves it into a beautifully poetic tapestry.” - Michael Garrigan, author of Robbing the Pillars   “Beaudin’s poems dip and swerve and caw; if you listen closely enough, you might just begin to understand that the ache of the human heart can only be translated through the language of crows.” - Meg Kearney, author of An Unkindness of Ravens   “Beaudin’s poems are truly poems for this moment. To inhabit birds and other vulnerable creatures, along with the beauty and wildness that bequeath us our souls, is to name what’s at stake in this moment. It has always been the poet’s job, but now, it is their sacred calling. Beaudin delivers beautifully.” - Winona Bateman, poet, and climate organizer with Families for a Livable Climate