In the first poem in Matthew Campbell Roberts’s searching collection, a father advises his son streamside: ‘Fish the close waters first, / then work your way out.’ And this is exactly what the poet does here, gathering into his net the shorelines, rivers, and estuaries of his beloved Pacific Northwest, its gray, wet skies, its cutthroat trout and salmon, as well as family and the weight and cost of memory. Measuring beauty against poverty, solitude against
loneliness, Roberts writes with lyric intensity and precision about rural, working class lives.

–Melissa Kwasny, author of Pictograph and The Nine Senses

Matthew Campbell Roberts gives us poems filled with the music of a bend in the river. His voice is tranquil, steady, and luminous. What a pleasure to be invited into the landscapes and inner life of this poet, ‘Just to sit on a log and guess at the tide / or scavenge for sea glass and agates / at the edge of breakers. Or do nothing at all /
and not worry about the news or work.’ A River Once More is a radiant collection–a refuge on a beautiful shore.

–Rena Priest, American Book Award winner for Patriarchy Blues