How to describe David Marquis? Maybe it’s best to call him the poet laureate of the Dallas landscape. A writer, activist, ecologist and consultant, he has spent a lifetime advocating for environmental issues, and especially on behalf of his beloved Trinity River.
His new book, The River of Goodness (Deep Vellum, $20), follows 2020′s The River Always Wins in what will be a riverine trilogy. Marquis takes up the mantle of John Graves, whose elegiac narrative Goodbye to a River (1960) about a trip down the Brazos stands as a classic of Texas (and American) literature.
![Author David Marquis.](https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/6MUHNQQK2FGZPAN7B2DSYH5O7E.jpg?auth=f83c8632cf281ff7c90293d2a7ff644d606cc57499f7343b14543624ba03f2c5&width=430&quality=80)
Posed as a “lyric essay,” The River of Goodness is a pocket-sized call to arms and to the imagination, an invitation to join the efforts to preserve and care for rivers, and to be inspired by them. “Come down to the river,” writes Marquis. “Come down now and sit, find a place along the bank, sit in the soft grass just past the reeds and the rushes, and watch the drops dance and shimmer and flow.”
Make sure to bring his book.