Praise for Body of Water
“A brilliant book. Destined to be a classic.” —Jim Harrison
“This gorgeous work wastes not a word on fly-fishing basics. It dives Moby-Dick-deep into a famed sport and livelihood's very essence, and never leaves. In the hands of veteran trout guide and poet Chris Dombrowski, the ‘Abraham’ of Caribbean guides, David Pinder Sr., becomes the perfect embodiment of the near mystery religion that is saltwater-flats fishing. Via the hearts of two men utterly in love with the wounded world in which their calling takes place, Body of Water then pours forth beauties, subtleties, dark history, and insight with an unforced lyrical power I associate with no lesser word than ‘masterpiece.’ Dombrowski's Michigan-to-Montana trajectory updates Jim Harrison, his comedic fishing scenes bear comparison to Thomas McGuane, and his powers of ebullient reflection bring to mind Mary Oliver—yet I’ve read no book anything like Body of Water, and enjoyed no book in memory more.”—David James Duncan
“Chris Dombrowski has fetched up a marvel. So very much is in it—geology, biology, fishing lore; conservation and natural history and personal quest—all seen by a wondrously limber mind traversing space and time. I don’t fish but this scarcely matters—Body of Water is about being alive. An abundant and reverential feast of a book."—Noy Holland, author of Bird
“Body of Water hits you in two ways. The first is obvious—this is a book about fish and fishing from a writer who's put in the time to know what he's talking about. But the second takes you by surprise: at its core, Body of Water is about our increasingly tenuous connection to nature, from a poet who understands the source of that strange and melancholic joy that we are blessed with only when we stand in wild places.”—Steven Rinella, author of Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter
“Uncanny and moving. This book will not only make you change your vacation plans, it might make you change your life. A reverent, almost holy book, of angling lore.”—Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red
2016-08-09
A poet and Montana-based fly-fishing guide recounts his trip to the Bahamas, where he met an aging guide who taught him about fish and life.In a lyrical if sometimes-overblown account, Dombrowski (Earth Again: Poems, 2013, etc.) loosely links reflections on his experiences catching and releasing bonefish, the history and geography of the Bahamas, the construction of fishing rods, stories he has told his children, and the difference between fishing or hunting for sport and for dinner. At the center of the book are David Pinder and his family. Pinder, retired—or forced out because cataracts restricted his sight—from the Deep Water Cay fishing lodge, where he worked for decades, still has an instinct for where fish are hiding, one he has passed down to some of his many children and grandchildren. Dombrowski regards Pinder, whose “life seems to verge on the rare heroic” and who has spent a lifetime “pursuing not only the seen but the unseen and intuited,” with reverence. He accords Pinder’s sayings—e.g., “you go looking for this, the ocean gives you that”—mythic significance. The author is fond of metaphors, some of which strain at their seams: a bonefish tail reminds him of “a loose-fitting bracelet affixed to the wrist of a beautiful woman seated at a bar,” and the sky at one point looks like “a ten-mile-wide Rothko, the canvas on loan from an archangel.” He heads each short chapter with an epigraph from the likes of Zen master Dogen and Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, which, depending on one’s point of view, either gives his angling adventures a philosophical slant or makes them sound pretentious. For Dombrowski, the “scarcely edible” bonefish, which he releases within seconds of catching them, are valuable simply because they are so difficult to hunt down. Some may find his demanding prose equally rewarding, while others might prefer the textual equivalent of something closer to a catfish.
