Red Obsidian

Stephan Torre's formative years were spent in western Montana, the northern California coast, and British Columbia. Though he's lived largely off-grid and in rural locations, his diverse working life includes college teaching, counseling and family services, farming, logging, and construction. Stephan lives in British Columbia.

Obsidian is a book for the ages. Full of grit and wonder, grief and exhilaration, these poems throw off sparks. What a stunning testament to a world worked over, silted up, yet full of wings." Kate Harris , author of Lands of Lost Borders "Torre has developed a language of myth to address human experience in the great wild places of the West." Publishers Weekly "By turns litany and chant, lyric and dirgean intense and empathetic voice." Alice Major, author of Welcome to the Anthropocene " Red Obsidian is bold, clean, as familiar yet original as water moving: luminous and its own element, yet connected powerfully to a further, ancient place. Torre writes in the vein of Snyder, Harrison, Merwin and Heaney. Like them, he lives in a world rarely accessible: yet here it is, magically durable, and losing none of its luster in the transference. He's one of North America's greatest living poets." Rick Bass "Red Obsidian is a book for the ages. Full of grit and wonder, grief and exhilaration, these poems throw off sparks. What a stunning testament to a world worked over, silted up, yet full of wings." Kate Harris , author of Lands of Lost Borders "From the fierce joy and naming of wilderness labor, to the deep stillness of its contemplation, these poems light up the mind and the heart." Dorianne Laux , author of Only as the Day Is Long, 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist "The poems in Red Obsidian channel a chorus of ancient Chinese poets and indigenous voices to praise our wounded but unyielding world. Stephan Torres's poems are lyrical, muscular, unflinching, and necessary." Gary Young , author of That's What I Thought