Journey to the River: A Collection of Forty Meditation Poems

The forty meditation poems of Fredrick Zydek’s Journey to the River, inspired by David Wagoner’s Straw For the Fire, a collection of poems, half poems and fragments David gathered from Theodore Roethke’s notes and notebooks in the Roethke archives at the University of Washington, first came into being in the 1960s when Wagoner, Zydek’s teacher, recommended Zydek spend some time in the Roethke archives. Soon after, Zydek wrote “18th Meditation: Journey to the River,” followed by additional meditations. The poems collected here represent decades’ worth of rumination on the human condition by one of America’s finest and most prolific poets.