River Suite is a portrait of moody small city life on the shores of the Saint John River in New Brunswick.River Suite is a diary of hope, sadness, love, and sex.River Suite is an honouring of the emotional and spiritual presence which this river carves for itself in people's lives.River Suite is constant movement in a topography of human ineffectualness and darkness.River Suite is a longing for change, a longing for recognition, a longing for difference and originality which is as elusive as happiness.River Suite is a song of life, remission, and redemption in the night. this coffee tastes of tears and far away ocean the sadness of wandering through destroyed remains of another's home knowing we cannot return to the past but perhaps by all powers that be the toppled can be righted and something rebuilt without anyone losing ...

Joe Blades lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick. On the editorial board of revue ellipse mag, he is President of the League of Canadian Poets, producer–host of the Ashes, Paper & Beans radio program, and founding publisher of the independent 25-year-old Broken Jaw Press. The author of seven poetry books, including Cover Makes a Set (1990), River Suite (1998), from the book that doesn’t close (2008) and the forthcoming Casemate Poems (Collected), two of his books were translated and published in Serbian editions in 2005, and several other book translations are in the works.

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