Last Trip to Oregon: Poems in Wake of Red’s Death

In these elegiac poems, George Payerle registers the experience of life continuing after the death of his closest friend, the British Columbia poet and historian Charles ‘Red’ Lillard. The poems describe their last trip together to the dry landscape of Central Oregon, circle to Alberta and then turn home to the wetscape of the Shadow Weather Coast. Throughout are woven meditations on music, particularly the Beethoven quartet Opus 131, in which the triumph of the ordinary becomes a portal to the extraordinary. Memory becomes prayer, with the spirit of person becoming present as the spirit of place.