Author of six volumes of poetry, William Witherup claims literary descent from a long lineage of western voices, among them William Everson, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. His poems are exceptionally rich and varied in subject matter. In work poems, nature poems, poems of love and loss, and political comment and satire, the voice is distinctive--that of a man who has come through and has welded the beauty and pain of the world to his writings.
In addition to the poems presented in Down Wind, Down River, this volume includes work from Black Ash, Orange Fire: Collected Poems 1959-85; Men at Work(1989); and translations of Enrique Lihn, Antonio Machado, and Vicente Huidobro.
"Skeptical of civilization, disgusted with its discontents, in him the reformist vein in West Coast writing finds outlet through an occasional tirade against polluters of every stripe, but that is not his strength. His strength is the impulse that moves his shyness to find its voice in understatement, the art that leaves implication suspended until its images explode in depth."--William Everson