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Welcome! Introducing my new book,The Dreams We Share, a collection of 86 poems related to our Earth. Please enjoy one of its poems, “The Whale’s Song,” in my book trailer. Purchase signed copies of my books sent directly to you.

Explore my five books, and listen to three of my audiobooks, Spangling Darkness, Strings of Shining Silence, and At This Table, all free offerings.

You’ll find a beautiful short documentary below that has touched many people, and is titled after my previous book, At This Table.

I produce the monthly Earth-Love Newsletter dedicated to sharing how we live and love the Earth in our unique ways. Please sign-up below to receive it. Now in its eighth year, all past issues are viewable here.

With all good wishes,
Raphael Block

Review of The Dreams We Share by Raphael Block

Reviewed by Dave Seter, Sonoma County Poet Laureate (2024 – 2026) in Cider Press Review, 2024.

Raphael Block’s most recent book, The Dreams We Share, fulfills the need for contemporary nature poetry written from a spiritual point of view. While unapologetically expressing an ecstatic response to nature, these poems acknowledge the human capacity to heal or to harm our world. Countering the cynical point of view that planet Earth is too far degraded to save, these poems seem to say: celebrating what sustains us motivates us to heal our world. Read the full review

Reviewed by Rebecca Patrascu in the Colorado Review, 2024

Raphael Block’s new collection, The Dreams We Share, is a work of sustained and reverent attention to the natural world. The poet’s fifth book, it contains eighty-nine poems in five sections, and names over a hundred different plants and nearly as many species of birds, animals, and insects. This abundance might suggest the volume reads like a life list, but Block’s language is plush, his approach that of a pilgrim rather than a collector. He is notably faithful to place. Each redwood tree, fence lizard, and redtail hawk populates the lines as naturally as it would its native habitat.

… The Dreams We Share itself can be read as both an antidote to cynicism and hopelessness and a call to action for the poet and his readers. “I pray for my heart / to be set ablaze,” Block says in “Ablaze.” In “The Combination,” he tells us, “All depends on your loving witness,” and “You are the key to this universe. / Now how will you be?” After reading this new collection, one might find it difficult to be anything but aware of the beauty and fragility of life, ready to heed the poet’s admonition from “Thistledown”: “don’t let this world / escape you.” Read the full review

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A film by Elias Koch. www.eliaskoch.com

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‘Meeting Light’, a poem from At This Table

A film by Adam Wilder