Description:
"I know of no living poet with a more wide-ranging fictive imagination than Russell Thorburn. His poetry is not like a novel; it's like seven or eight sometimes interconnected novels, plus a three-volume memoir. If you are new to these worlds of Thorburn, welcome! His new collection, And the Heart Will Not Quicken, is an ideal, inviting place to begin, knowing decades of rich narrative histories have arrived here and are also waiting when you want them. If you've been reading Thorburn for many years, you'll find in this new book the good, familiar company of old friends and meet some irresistible new ones, too."
-Jonathan Johnson, author of Pine
Brief description: Russell Thorburn is the author of several poetry collections, including Let It Be Told in a Single Breath (Cornerstone Press 2024). A National Endowment for the Arts recipient and first poet laureate of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, he lives in Marquette, Michigan, with his wife.
Review Quotes:
"These are forward-looking poems, discovering the when, where, and how of what could be if only we dare imagine it. "
-Margaret Rozga, author of Restoring Prairie
"Thorburn reminds you of all the ways a poem can make us feel alive."
-Peter Markus, author of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds
"Expect the unexpected when opening Thorburn's latest, rich collection."
-Nancy Owen Nelson, author of Five Points South
"Russell Thorburn is as much myth as poet . . . a true original."
-Cal Freeman, author of The Weather of Our Names
"The homeland of the poet, the Upper Peninsula and downstate Michigan, resonate with Whitman-esque and Thorburn-esque beauty and quill. "
-Alex Gubbins, author of To a Utopia of Graffiti and City
"Thorburn knows how to hit the right note. "
-Greg Ormson, author of Bears Emerge Like Stories