River Fugue by Sarah Frost

River Fugue is Sarah Frost’s second poetry collection, and continues with the search to find herself through her connections to nature which she explored in her first collection, Conduit. The poems grapple with the persistence of wonder, how one finds it, then loses it, then finds it again. By describing the loss, they evoke it as well, the absence accentuating even more strongly what she yearns for. The collection records a coming to terms with a difficult childhood, and the renegotiation of an adult relationship with the poet’s parents. Writing to forgive, the poet has crafted poems that are transcendent and affirmatory.

In language both luminous and illuminating, Sarah Frost deciphers inner and outer landscapes throughout this strong new collection. Love and grief, loss and forgiveness are mapped and navigated with consummate skill. Rites of passage, whether into poetry or parenthood, come to vivid life. Each change in the weather arrives with the urgency of revelation, and its mystery remains unexhausted at the poem’s end. In one poem, she laments having ‘lost those eyes ablaze with wonder.’ Each poem in this collection demonstrates that she has not.