The Theory and Practice of Rivers

The Theory and Practice of Rivers Synopsis

Filled with "moving water" and intuitive leaps, The Theory and Practice of Rivers is an elegy for Harrison's sixteen-year-old niece.

The Theory & Practice of Rivers by Jim Harrison returns to print as a celebratory, stand-alone volume in this new edition. In her heartfelt and powerful introduction, Rebecca Solnit calls this collection both elegy (inspired by the death of Harrison's sixteen-year-old niece) and "loose memoir" (filled with thoughts that leap intuitively across subjects, recalling myriad experiences, places, and encounters). We see the past made real as images of a handwritten draft of the title poem invoke Harrison on the page. As Outside magazine puts it, The Theory & Practice of Rivers is filled with "moving water, the search for consolation and meaning in the sublime rightness of wild landscape." Anchored by a long poem sequence seated at its heart, this contemporary classic speaks to the rivers and cascades in all of us, the motion by which our lives are determined.