David Oates

The Heron Place David Oates

Poetry. Like A. R. Ammon's Corson's Inlet, David Oates in THE HERON PLACE makes a walk in a wild place into an excursion into nature and mind, drawing a stunning sense of landscapes inner and outer, the wounds and failures and beauties that attend both realms. With brilliant turns and keen attention, he renders the heron place into a reverie. How are we to live with the history of anguish that lies in the land beneath our feet and in our own failures of love? We are to walk and see and say again a story strong enough to hold both love and failure, the saying itself an act of reconciliation. This sequence is a marvel to read.--Alison Hawthorne Deming