David Oates writes about the arts, nature, and urban life from Portland, Oregon. He has published six books of nonfiction, including The Mountains of Paris: How Awe and Wonder Rewrote My Life (Oregon State University Press) which won the 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award for Memoir and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. His essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, and Orion, winning nonfiction awards and Pushcart Prize nominations. His poetry and prose are featured in the German literary journal Wortschau, which also published his collaboration with Johanna Hansen (in German and English) as the book Schreiben ist eine Art von Luftwiderstand (2019). The Heron Place won the 2015 Poetry Award and publication from Swan Scythe Press (San Francisco). His previous book of poetry Peace in Exile was published by Oyster River. He is general editor and founder of the small literary press Kelson Books and was Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana. His Ph.D. in literature is from Emory University. More information at davidoates.info.
Website: http://davidoates.info
by David Oates We live in The Year Of Overlapping Catastrophes. Oh 2020, we know ye all too well. The pandemic, our very own plague. Economic depression. A quasi-fascistic con man at the head of government. The discovery that perhaps forty percent of our fellow Americans are truth-hating dupes and low-information racists. (Brits too. Decline…
by David Oates In my preceding post, I reflected on the poetry of the eighth-century Chinese master Tu Fu, which has nourished me for decades (in translation, of course). Tu Fu found a way to place himself both inside and outside the whirling political disorder of his times. I drew strength from the quiet inwardness…
by David Oates My decision not to go into downtown Portland for the protest demonstration has held up for four weeks now. The Federal provocateurs have finally begun to leave, and the threat of violence has been reduced to comparative insignificance. . . so it seems that if I were to show up now, it…
by David Oates Some time before the beginning of the quarantine, walking in a pleasantly not-fancy Portland neighborhood near my own, I was stopped dead in my tracks: Bach on the piano. And close by! Suddenly all my thoughts were of music. The day’s work dropped away; the tangles and labors of writing; the distant…