Pathfinder: Selected Poems, Essays & Tales

IN 1973, IN HIS POEM "Reply," Bob Love wrote,All these yearsI have been learningthe woods, and nowyou call mea poet.He's spent the 50 years since then working in the woods, and he's still learning them. He's a logger, and a conservationist. He speaks directly and with authority. The first 70 pages of the book are poems - presenting a crystal-clear tableau of a life well-lived. The rest of the book is a collection of essays and stories that fill in the gaps of what may have been implied in the poems.. Bob Love is an old soul. There is a reverent tone in many of these pieces, and mysteries abound. There is great power and intelligence in his words. But don't get me wrong - there is also a strain of wry humor that threads throughout the book. "Work Truck," "Reading Bukowski: Lunchbreak" and "Saw Shop Dharma" are three prime examples. And the poem "If" measures up to all the other poems that have been written extolling the lifestyle of bears vs. humans. To do justice to the myriad other salient aspects of the book would take an entire volume. Bob Love has kept relatively quiet these past 50 years and is now breaking bread with us, the larger community.