"Thirty years after P.K. Page brought the glosa to our collective dazzled attention, John Reibetanz takes a poetic form that is inarguably the one most enthusiastically appropriated by many Canadian poets and makes it abundantly his own. A verse strategy designed to bring one poet into intimate, if brief, conversation with another is given the page-turning sweep of intellectual narrative in three multi-glosa dialogues between Reibetanz and Wang An-shih, Henry Thoreau, and Emily Carr. As in all meaningful, lifelong one-on-ones, his exchanges with his reclusive mandarin, bushwhacking Transcendentalist, and rainforest mystic are pensive, polemical, humourous, lyrical, confiding, philosophical, and generously searching. A lifetime of reading, deep thinking and profound appreciation makes the glosas in Earth Words the most remarkable poems in Reibetanz's already impressive career." John Barton, author of Lost Family: A Memoir
"'I've been searching for you, teacher,' John Reibetanz writes to Wang An-shih; 'Walk with me, Henry,' he addresses Thoreau; and to Emily Carr, 'Fast forward on your part, rewind on mine.' With great humanity and astonishing control of craft, Reibetanz invites his readers into cross-generational encounters with three 'seers.' Each poem is both a superb glosa and an invitation to learn what unites us with these lives of vastly different sensibilities, challenges, and dangers. With a light touch and a careful aesthetic, Reibetanz responds to his encounters with exquisite small tracts of lightness, beauty, and wisdom." Maureen Hynes, author of Sotto Voce
