Rachel Hadas

The River of Forgetfulness

The River of Forgetfulness is the 10th book of poetry by Board of Governors Professor of English Rachel Hadas. (The title refers to the River Lethe; in Greek mythology, anyone who drank from it forgot their previous life.) In The River of Forgetfulness, Hadas addresses themes of sleep and dreams, death and remembrance, grief and loss, motherhood, reading and teaching. According to reviewer Isaac Cates, "The poems in River of Forgetfulness have a powerful cumulative effect that insists on the value of the book as a book, a collection to be read over, returned to, dipped back into; a sheaf of margins to be marked up, an almost symphonic arrangement of themes and concerns." (The Hopkins Review, Spring 2008).

The themes of The River of Forgetfulness are human conditions that Hadas has explored previously, particularly in Halfway Down the Hall: New & Selected Poems, The Empty Bed, The Double Legacy, Mirrors of Astonishment and Living in Time.

Rachel Hadas is also coeditor of an anthology from W.W. Norton published in December 2009, THE GREEK POETS: Homer to the Present.

Also by the author: Strange Relation  and The Golden Road