Oregon

Henry Carlile’s fourth book of poems is deeply connected though not confined to the Pacific Northwest. The poems in Oregon range from haiku to near epic, a single mother’s efforts to provide during the end of the Great Depression and World War II, a favorite uncle killed in the Ardennes, friends lost, a dog both real and mythic that appears and reappears as a four-legged muse, and a fisherman’s love of the natural world—often cruel and unforgiving, imperiled by practices that threaten its extinction. Oregon’s clear, compelling language comes from lived experience, a keen understanding of how language and memory deceive and redeem us.