In River Road: A Mississippiad, author Robert Bense takes his readers on a journey back and forth through time as he contemplates the meanings of the great river. At once communal and intensely personal, the stories these poems convey wash over us and push us forward into our own memories and dreams. "Robert Bense's River Road is a masterwork...There's something of Dante in this book's exemplary scope, humility, and temerity--its will to frame an image that will hold and reflect our vanishing lives." D. Nurkse