Coming Down The Mountain by Gary Lark, Reviewed by Carol Barrett

Reviewed by Carol Barrett

Coming Down the Mountain by Gary Lark
Kelsay Books, 2024, 103 pages, $23.00
ISBN 978-1-63980-652-2
Available at https://kelsaybooks.com; https://garylark.work

Coming Down the Mountain book cover, a road going through trees

Gary Lark is an Oregon poet through and through. Born here, and raised in the Umpqua Valley of Southern Oregon, he now lives in Grants Pass. Coming Down the Mountain, Lark’s latest book of poetry, is divided into three compelling sections. In the first, he names the fish, trees, and birds that populated his upbringing as a third generation fly fisherman. These poems also reveal, one by one, the characters who splashed in the river of his evolving psyche: parents, grandparents, brother, townsfolk, country folk in a rural setting. In “Worm on a Hook,” we find Light is turning purple,/ shadows getting longer,/ I can almost smell supper. These poignant biographies situate the reader in unforgettable encounters.

In the second section, Lark moves closer in to explore social ills: fomenting poverty, racial arrogance, and all the ways we divide ourselves to loom higher on some imagined ladder of significance, or on the real ladder that accompanies greed. He does not flinch from the consequences: the gold-silver-copper virus / divides the soul of the land./ Stones die. Stars no longer speak (“Up From Savagery”). The militarization of youth is addressed in several poems, including “Roger Drops Out,” which comes to a startling conclusion about a former classmate: he is a deer bleeding out/as night comes. In “Embrace,” Lark names the struggle with an ignorance/ so profound that we think/ the darkness is outside us. He offers an indictment of compassion that comes too late in “Third Movement,” with the poem ending

Compassion, after economics,
after property rights,
after elections are over,
bringing up the rear.

In the third section Lark returns to explore his legacy both with family and with nature. In “Legacy” he recalls that as a child fishing, there, in the beginning of my life,/ the universe swallowed me. A bit later we read, I am the river’s breath. In “Rose Garden,” a poem honoring his mother, he tells her:

By the way, the house
may be crumbling
but your Climbing Peace
is burgeoning over all
and may cover the county.

In the title poem, “Coming Down the Mountain,” we join with the poet’s enduring recollections:

I followed an elk trail,
mint released by my boots
opening my senses,
and there, where the stream
zigs and zags at the whim of wonder
I conversed with brook trout.

There is so much to admire in these well-crafted pieces. I am impressed not only with the distinctive narratives, but Lark’s knowledge of beings beyond our human tribe and the way he ends each poem. His final lines are so not so much the hook snagging the trout, as the fly swung out over the water: the vibrant touch-down, rippling out beyond what can be seen or heard.

Reviewer Bio:

Carol Barrett, Ph.D., began writing poetry to support the widowed women she was counseling. She has published three volumes of poetry, most recently Reading Wind, which was the third-place winner in the 2024 Poetry Box chapbook competition. Her first full-length collection, Calling in the Bones, won the Richard Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press. An NEA Fellow in Poetry, Carol has also published creative nonfiction, Pansies, a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. She has lived in nine states and in England, and is currently at home in Bend, Oregon.

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