Purchase Here: Today I Found the River
“Lucky for us, the river that Elizabeth McKim has found is wide, and the water is light. She invites the reader to be carried along with her in a cascade of experiences. A lifetime of engagement with words flows through this collection as McKim’s poems eddy and swirl, mirror and mock. Whirling, they are, at times, chaotic and dangerous. In these poems, wild children break colored stones, the wind rubs us sore, scud missiles tear up the dark, cops enter the kitchen, and mice scamper sideways. Saturated with blues, loss, love, and memory, the river floods with impulse and rhythm, and streams with the sting and honey of bees. These poems sing, even in the presence of “the cell boss of angels…who swoops/and flails” and children who swing their fists. With these song poems, McKim takes us to the River she found and the reader comes away refreshed.”
Mary Buchinger, author of The Book of Shores and Navigating the Reach
Haikus for Late December
Day and night the bright
Sound of bells in the cradle
between two mountains
Waxes and wanes
In the exact middle of things
where the riddle remains
Tin/tin/abulation
in the valley between joy
and desolation woe and
jubilation
About Elizabeth Gordon McKim
Born in Hartford Connecticut in the wake of the 1938 hurricane Elizabeth Gordon McKim is an
artist whose roots are firmly rooted in the oral tradition of song, story, and poem. McKim is an
inter-generational teacher and spoken word performer. She has served as artist in residence in hundreds of schools and colleges throughout the U..S. and internationally . E/liz is the author of eight books of poetry, and a memoir of her time with the poet Etheridge Knight. She also edited and wrote with Judith Steinbergh Beyond Words, a teaching anthology which includes over 200 poems by children.