The Mountains of Paris
This book is an exploration of the mystery of awe, the meaning of wonder. Our lives are surrounded by it, nourished by it. If we just remember to look!
Read about the book at Oregon State University Press
Winner of multiple awards for nonfiction.
Writing is a Kind of Air-Resistance
Schreiben ist eine Art von Luftwiderstand
I have enjoyed a five-year exchange of “public letters” with the poet and artist Johanna Hansen, co-editor of the German literary journal Wortschau. Our exchange, usually two letters a year (mine in English and translated into German), ranged of course over many topics: poetry, longing, Bach…the color blue… and of course Paris, where Johanna and I met while in residency in the Cité des arts internationale in the winter and spring of 2014.
These were gathered into a marvellous book, published by Wortschau in 2019.
The Heron Place
Winner of Swan Scythe Press Poetry Award, published in December 2015.
A poem-sequence about language, landscape, and memory. Also finalist for Pablo Neruda Long-Poem Award (Nimrod International).
What We Love Will Save Us
Kelson Books, September 16, 2009.
Fresh wildness and grace are breaking out all around us — despite the seeming nonsense of politics, the ignorance, selfishness, and sheer greed. Yep, it’s a tough ol’ world, despite how bogglingly beautiful. . .
This is a book about finding the balance between necessary outrage, and joyous engagement. It is about pleasure, truthtelling, and finding your way.
Above all these brief, vivid essays bear witness to the organized mayhem of those War Years of lying, of killing and being killed, of a White House dedicated to the practice of propaganda and torture as key political strategies. What exactly is the right path of a citizen under these circumstances? And how does one maintain an authentic creative path without getting sucked into complicity — or irrelevancy?
$11.95 special: no s/h charge for this book (contact me please)
City Limits: Walking Portland’s Boundary
Oregon State University Press, Spring 2006.
How can community decisions mesh with individual rights? Is there an “us” that can develop a rich communal life in an urban context? Portland’s “Urban Growth Boundary” represents one of America’s premier experiments in urban planning – preventing sprawl, encouraging urban density, and preserving open space and farm land between urban areas.
I took a 260-mile trek along the Boundary, kayaking the river portions and walking in neighborhoods, forests, mountain trails, vineyards, and wide-open wheat fields. I also invited collaborators to spend a day walking with me and then contribute to the book: writer Kathleen Dean Moore (The Pine Island Paradox and many other books), Metro President David Bragdon, and other urbanists, environmentalists, growers, artists, and developers.
Read about the book at Oregon State University Press
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Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature
Oregon State University Press, February 2003.
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Channeling Walt in Time of War
February 2004.
A poetry chapbook searching for creative hopefulness despite war, official lying, and mass murder; letterpress-printed by gifted Portland book artist Inge Bruggeman on fine paper. A physically beautiful book, bearing an inspiring quartet of poems.
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Peace in Exile: Poems
Oyster River Press (New Hampshire), 1992. ISBN: 0961748192
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Earth Rising: Ecological Belief in an Age of Science
Oregon State University Press, 1989. ISBN: 0870713574
This book, a forerunner to David Oates’ current work, was praised by the eminent ecologist and social theorist, the late Paul Shepard, as an “audacious effort” to synthesize and find the meaning of the modern environmental movement, “one of the best I have seen.”
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