Richard Eberhart’s The Long Reach is a major new collection by one of America’s most eminent poets. Now entering his eightieth year, he has brought together recent poems––some unpublished, others that had their first appearance in magazines and small press editions–-and added to them works which, for one reason or another, were not included in his previous books. The result is a vigorous, diversified volume by a man whose creative energies have if anything expanded with his years. Eberhart himself has described the book as “a long reach at meanings at manifold meanings, at the wide variety as well as the heights and depths of my consciousness. I think of it as a preservation of a volatile workshop covering recent years, a compendium of thrusts and recognitions which define the nature of my feelings and reactions to life. I want to show a broad canvas rather than a narrow view, put in place what I think worth preserving at this stage in my life.”
Poems deal with truth, religion, nature, thought, the role of poetry, death, visions, age, and the past.
