The Theory and Practice of Rivers

Filled with “moving water” and intuitive leaps, The Theory and Practice of Rivers is an elegy for Harrison’s sixteen-year-old niece.

The Theory & Practice of Rivers by Jim Harrison returns to print as a celebratory, stand-alone volume in this new edition. In her heartfelt and powerful introduction, Rebecca Solnit calls this collection both elegy (inspired by the death of Harrison’s sixteen-year-old niece) and “loose memoir” (filled with thoughts that leap intuitively across subjects, recalling myriad experiences, places, and encounters). We see the past made real as images of a handwritten draft of the title poem invoke Harrison on the page. As Outside magazine puts it, The Theory & Practice of Rivers is filled with “moving water, the search for consolation and meaning in the sublime rightness of wild landscape.” Anchored by a long poem sequence seated at its heart, this contemporary classic speaks to the rivers and cascades in all of us, the motion by which our lives are determined.