The River Running Through Him
By Kaye Nelson Ratliff

 Just as a river shapes the contours of the land around it, our lives are shaped by the currents that flow through us, the currents such as family, friends, experiences and places.

Kaye Ratliff’s wonderful debut collection, The River Running Through Him, weaves the currents of a life lived in gratitude and contemplation with an abiding sense of the land, braided with the wisdom and humility of having both feet firmly planted on earth and eyes wide open.

Ratliff beautifully renders the natural world in poems that invoke Wendell Berry and Mary Louise Medley (another marvelous Anson County poet).

— Joseph Bathanti, NC Poet Laureate 2012-2014