Free Will and the River (2005) by Judith Root

Whether Judith Root was sitting in a doctor's waiting room, barnstorming in a red and white plane, or simply observing two couples on a quilt in a park, her sharply rendered poems traced currents of time and tides through shifting seasonal rhythms as they shape our intentions, permeate our past, and illuminate the present moment.

Judith Root's first full-length collection of poems, Weaving the Sheets, was published by Abattoir Editions (Univ. of Nebraska-Omaha) and reprinted by Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press. Her poems appeared in Poetry, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Commonweal and others. She received various awards, including a fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts.

She taught writing at universities in Minnesota, Missouri, California, Texas, North Carolina, Idaho, and elsewhere. She died at 81 in Portland, Oregon in 2021.