Description: John Straley crafts here a collection of poems that pay homage to his home of the Pacific Northwest and southeastern Alaska. His narrative poetry is infused with sharp wit and delicate details, as he meditates on the natural world of the Pacific coastline and its rhythmic seasonal patterns, cycles of rain, and rich abundance of earth. Straley intertwines the personal and political to create elegies of refreshing honesty and universal scope, making The Rising and Rain a powerful work by one of the top emerging poets today.
Brief description: John Straley is a criminal defense investigator for Alaska's Public Defender Agency and was named the Alaska Writer Laureate in 2006.