Short Journey Upriver Toward OishidaPaperback, 16 March 2004

In Roo Borson s new watershed collection, it is as though language were being taught to increase its powers of concentration, to hearken simultaneously to the fully impinged-upon senses, the reflecting mind with its griefs and yearnings, the heart with its burden of live memory. Always the line bends as the river bends, a quick ever-adjusting music that carries in its current those cherished, perishable, details of eye and ear, mid-life reflections on loss and home, the subtle shifts in season suddenly made strange and re-awakened. Recurrently, probingly, the line returns to the place of poetry in our lives. In the spirit of Basho s famous journey to the far north, Borson s short journey reminds us of the role of poetry in shaping and deepening our engagement with the world."