Coming down the Mountain

Gary Lark is an Oregon original, steeped in the unsentimental realism of William Stafford but forging his own trail through a life of knowing deeply the land and people around him. "Poems of place" doesn't come close to describing what Lark does with a hayfield, a kitchen, a tackle shop-he brings the reader along to inhabit them, breathe them, wade in them, and to feel the passage of loved ones and reticent strangers who guard the secrets of their own rich lives, even as we watch. Coming Down the Mountain never strays far from home, but instead goes deep into the soil, rivers, and people, examining past and present with the steady eye of someone who loves this place and also keenly understands that our time here is fragile and finite.

-Amy Miller, author of Astronauts and The Trouble with New England Girls

Coming Down the Mountain is so lean and direct-and so artfully rendered-that the social realities, geographies, family narratives, and moral concerns of the poet rise up from the page with all their contradictions and revelations. The imperative in this collection is to name and to witness, to bring forth the raw elements of the everyday, to move across great swaths of time the way a raptor moves its weightless shadow across open water. Seasoned with just the right amount of wry observation and humor, and driven by sharp-edged truths, this book will keep you barreling ahead, astonished.

-Michael McGriff, author of Angel Sharpening its Beak and Eternal Sentences

Gary Lark takes the simple acts of rural living and makes them sacred. His unadorned, plain-spoken language rings true at every riffle in the river, every conversation, heartbreak and triumph. This book is an Oregon treasure.

-Henry Hughes, Oregon Book Award-winning poet and author of Back Seat with Fish