About Coming Down The Mountain (poetry):
"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.
“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
Author bio:
Gary Lark is the author of seven books and four chapbooks, Coming Down the Mountain is the most recent. Lark says. “I have a desire to feel the resonance of words coalescing in an endless consciousness. Stories give me joy when the words create something new. I seek that joy”.
His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Rattle, Sky Island and others. Gary and his wife Dorothy live in Oregon's Rogue Valley.