Under the Influence of Water: Poems, Essays, and Stories

By Michael Delp

Under the Influence of Water is about moments--how time goes away on a river.

Although the theme is fly fishing, this book is really about the more esoteric, spiritual aspects of fishing. Through his poetry, essays, and short fiction, Delp writes about being haunted by fishing, about being taken over, literally, by the desire to fish and spend time alone on trout streams. He describes the experience as "a pause, a deep breath in the crush of living. It seems incredibly simple, yet trout fishing illuminates an inner life, asks the mind and body to give themselves over to another power: '

Under the Influence of Water is about moments--how time goes away on a river. It's about waking up and finding out that what runs in your veins is river water mixed with blood. It's also about trying to find the courage to one day stand in a river and admit your life. Delp says that's what happens when you fly fish . . . you get your life back, if only for a few moments. When you go back to your other life, the river is still with you. If it's not, then you haven't really been on a river.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081432391X
• ISBN13: 9780814323915
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.6" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

a deep well for thirsty minds

Delp is the best contemporary poet dealing with water. His sensitivity and emotional embrace of water is unique. I have used this book (and his equally good The Coast of Nowhere) in teaching my water management and ethics courses at Harvard University, as well as quoting Delp fully 9 times (only Thoreau is more represented!) in my own book Deep Immersion: The Experience of Water (nominated for top environmental book of the year). Delp's writing makes us want to stop reading and start plunging into water. For as Thoreau wrote "That part of you that is wettest is full of life" (quoted in Profitably Soaked: Thoreau's Engagement With Water, Green Frigate Books, 2003).