River of Light

poems by Daniel Thomas

Print (softcover): $17.95
 

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River of Light charts a voyage that begins in the gathering headwaters of grief and blessing, then floats through the confluence and flow of Eastern spiritual practices. At its delta, it enters the sea with poems about light and death and speculation on the afterlife. The poem from which the book takes its title draws inspiration from Canto 30 of Dante’s Paradiso and Monet’s dictum that “the real subject of every painting is light.”

POETRY / General 

ISBN: 978-1-962082-85-3 (print; softcover; perfect bound)

LCCN: 2025946193

Released September 23, 2025  |  Copyright 2025

78 pages; 4 black-and-white images

Author Biography

River of Light is Daniel Thomas’s third collection of poetry. His second poetry book, Leaving the Base Camp at Dawn, was published in 2022. His first collection, Deep Pockets, won a 2018 Catholic Press Award. He has published poems in many journals, including Poetry Ireland Review, Southern Poetry Review, Nimrod, and Atlanta Review.

Thomas was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, he studied music, English literature, and German literature. He went on to graduate studies in film history, theory and criticism at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has an MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University. His graduate degree in film led him to Twin Cities Public Television, where he was the video editor of an Emmy Award-winning national PBS series and producer of local documentaries. He went on to become chief operating officer of the PBS station. His long career in nonprofit management includes work as an executive director and a chief development officer.

In addition to writing poetry, Thomas plays the guitar and writes music. For six years he served as vice-chair of the American Composers Forum. His album, Fur and Feathers, is available on most streaming services. Dan is the father of three grown children. He moved to Santa Barbara, California, in 2015. Find poetry, music, and photography at danielthomaspoetry.com.

Endorsements

“‘If anything that becomes visible is light, / then we and all the world are light,’ Daniel Thomas writes in a poem that promises ‘the face / of the Creator is the sum radiance / of everything that shines.’ It’s a credo that might well serve for every poem in River of Light, whether it is an elegy or an epiphany, an evensong or an ode to pulling weeds. In an age when darkness threatens to consume us, Thomas’s luminescent poetry insists that hope and an appreciation for the everyday sweetness of life can lead us to an ‘Abundance . . . blue as the washed summer sky’.”
—David Starkey, author of You, Caravaggio and The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light

“These poems have a quiet presence as if stones shaped by water. Many of them reveal the artistic and spiritual tradition to which Daniel Thomas belongs—his affinity for Rothko, Vermeer, and Monet; his devotion to Dante, Hildegard of Bingen, and Basho; his love of light and music and the natural world. Dear Reader, if you are seeking a path and if a book of poems can also be a pilgrimage, then walk along the banks of the River of Light.”
—Marsha de la O, author of Creature

“An apparent master of natural description, ‘the world’s wild ornaments,’ Daniel Thomas is a poet who ‘seeks the god of fullness by praising the god of emptiness.’ As he observes in River of Light, ‘language transforms landscape,’ and his readers, witnessing this process, will likely be moved to an abundance of praise.”
—B. H. Fairchild, author of An Ordinary Life

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