Bird Servant

Robert Rich has made a lasting influence in the world of ambient and electronic music for four decades. Bird Servant represents his first published book of poetry. With detectable influences of David Budbill, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Oliver or Taoist poets like Tu Fu, Rich's words carry themselves lightly with humor, and he delights in the musical possibilities inherent in language. Yet he also speaks in a distinctly modern voice, ruminates on the human impact upon nature and environment, ponders the illusions of perception, and celebrates the sense of place that grows when we pay attention closely to our world. Best of all, these poems and thought experiments express ecstatic wonder with life, and the mystery we share in the act of existing.