The Last Trip to Oregon

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Payerle’s book was conceived as a tribute to his friend Charles
Lillard, a deceased poet. The work takes the form of journeys, some
literal, some imaginary. Places dealt with include central Oregon,
Calgary, Salt Spring Island, and the “Shadow Weather Coast” that
Lillard wrote about, the part of the West Coast stretching from Puget
Sound to Alaska. The place references in the journeys are interspersed
with reflections on Bach and Beethoven, some celebrations of marriage
and fatherhood, a couple of poems about a divorce from a first wife, and
occasional echoes of Aboriginal lore. These are warm and generous poems
but they lack specific gravity, unless sentimentality counts as weight.
There is nothing distinguished in the diction and imagery, and the
individual poems as well as the sequences need more shape.