A book of poetry, spanning several years of life transitions.

“Having been, for many years now, a deep admirer of Robert Rich’s awe-inspiring work as a consummate composer and musician, I find myself right at home in his poetry in Bird Servant and the familiar themes it develops: an abiding love of nature, of wilderness, a luminous mysticism, a passion for quietness, the witnessing of the biosphere’s splendor and the gentle grief for ‘what we leave behind.’ And yet, this collection is completely unique—even as a close friend who sees some of our familiar conversations (about daily visits from birds on his house deck, for instance, or about a murder of crows performing a funeral for one of their own) evoked in these poems, I am being made party here to another side of Robert: his genuinely spiritual attention to the minute beauties of the daily, which he distills with a tenacious, almost detached honesty that reminds one of Mary Oliver or of Gary Snyder, and with a sometimes cheeky, often analytical, Zen-like precision reminiscent of David Budbill or of the French master Francis Ponge. Robert’s poetry, I suspect, isn’t for those who seek easy reassurance about ourselves and the world; his finely crafted offerings are occasionally disquieting, or at least distrustful of platitudes. They do something much better than reassure us, though—these poems (each one on its own and all of them through the intricate web they form) give the solace of clear looking, of clear seeing, of clear presence. Bird Servant is what emerges when the soul of a profound artist graces us with the unflinching ‘eye of spirit’—the sense that, underneath all the entropy, the pollution, and the madness, there might yet be a saving grace—if we listen for real.”

Christian Arnsperger
Professor of Sustainability
University of Lausanne, Switzerland

The Kindle e-book is now available on Amazon, also print-on-demand paperbacks. We also have signed paperback copies in our web store. An audio book along with other e-book formats is available through Bandcamp. The audio book should also become available through Audible.

Here is the Bandcamp Audio Book for preview. By purchasing the audio book, you will have access to EPUB and PDF format eBooks at no extra cost: