River of Light ─ A Conversation With Kabir

River of Light: A Conversation with Kabir is a book-length poem that takes the reader on a week-long raft trip down a wild river in southcentral Alaska. Regional wildlife inhabit the poem’s world, and the river’s shifting landscape energizes and enriches the meditative mood as the river’s waves and currents influence the shaping and pacing of its lines. Because the raft trip took place in 2003 during the second Iraq War, war is on the narrator’s mind; but the trip is a spiritual journey as well, since the poem incorporates commentary by the fifteenth-century Indian mystic poet Kabir, who serves as a kind of mentor for the poem’s narrator.
This volume includes artwork by the distinguished Alaska artist Kesler Woodward. Appropriately, the artist, who participated in the original raft trip, appears in the poem.

John Morgan has published four earlier books of poetry and, most recently, a collection of essays called Forms of Feeling: Poetry in Our Lives. He was the first writer-in-residence at Denali National Park. He lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Bellingham, Washington. Kesler Woodward is professor of art emeritus from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is the author of six books, most recently Painting Alaska. He lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.