Selected from Ricardo Sternberg’s four collections, along with astonishing new poems, One River is a major event. A poet who, according to one reviewer, “has divined the secret connections between the words,” Sternberg’s voice is unlike any other: witty, earthy, exuberant, inventive. His poems also forgo conventional subjects. Alchemists, mermaids, angels, and “jongleur” grasshoppers share space with all manner of eccentrics: a trapeze artist, a pilot who navigates by smell, a millionaire who sneaks into heaven disguised as a camel. At the heart of Sternberg’s practice is prestidigitation: the sleight of hand that inheres in effortless turns of phrase, brisk syntax, and bold forms. “Leave it to me,” he says to his muse, “to come up with something / that while not highfalutin, /carries a whiff of the sublime.” Charismatic and original, Sternberg’s enduring work is captured in all of its extraordinary range in this new book.

REVIEWS

One River: New and Selected Poems by Ricardo Sternberg is the kind of poetry collection that only comes from nearly three decades of trying to write meaningful, personal lyric poems with compelling poetic structures. … This is a terrific, masterful collection that I hope finds a wide audience. It deserves all the praise it has been getting.” -Chris Banks, The Woodlot

“[Sternberg] offers the confidence of a man who’s read it all, and figured out what he wants to do with it. He doesn’t have to show off, and he assumes a readership that knows as much as he does. He riffs on the classics with humor and his own bittersweet point of view.” – Carla Sarett, New Verse Review