River Eternal

Kinseth, who lives in Iowa, sets out here to bridge the everyday and the eternal, using his experience of a familiar prairie river as a starting point for observations about the universe. ``Rivering,'' as he calls it, becomes a metaphor for the cosmos and eternal change. The language in this attempt to communicate with the landscape by becoming one with the river and with all nature, and to discover eternal truths in a common setting, is reminiscent of Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez, but Kinseth's effusive writing style, while effective in some passages, tends to be overblown, and his metaphors are strained and awkward, so that the point is often obscured. The overall effect is unconvincing. (Mar.)