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$12.00 (+ $3 s/h)

First Edition (1999)
ISBN: 1-877655-31-7
Trade Paper
6" x 9"
131 pages

Published by Ice River Press
(an imprint of Wordcraft of Oregon)

​Cover Photo by Dave Jensen

WEST OF PARADISE
Poems

Finalist, Oregon Book Award in Poetry, 2000

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The OREGONIAN has described George Venn as one of "the best-known and most respected poets in the state." As Primus St. John puts it, "George Venn is . . . a poet of great heart for the majesty of place and creatures, of water running and the old trees still standing, for epics of the first people and those who came later, for the wilderness gone and the wilderness still left--inside and outside us."
Ice River Press is an imprint of Wordcraft of Oregon.

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PRE-PUBLICATION REVIEWS

"This is poetry of big love, great heart. George Venn's scale is immense and inclusive.... The only other poet I know whose work has such range is Tom McGrath who, like George Venn, told the stories of his region in such a way as to make them magical, luminous, and permanent..."
—James Bertolino, author of First Credo, Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series

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"George Venn poems in West of Paradise are…always sharp, always physical. He knows that place is more than geography. Place is the way you tell your story and live your remembering. And what he tells and what he remembers is that place and poetry, memory and love–all can be one, 'moving together the way tanagers/fly,' if we have the strength 'to/listen without divisions.' "
—William McRae, writer, editor, & critic,The Literature of Science (U. of Georgia, 1993)

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"In West of Paradise George Venn covers the territory from aluminum foil-covered coffee cans full of flowers at grave sites to emperor penguins carrying their eggs on the tops of their feet. Whether dealing with the Colfax Grade or the great undulations of the Palouse, he is a master of the detail that exudes the spirit of place, of time, of the hopes and joys of the human soul."
—Karen Swenson, author of The Landlady in Bankok (Copper Canyon, 1994)

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"George Venn is…a poet of great heart for the majesty of place and creatures, of water running and the old trees still standing, for epics of the first people and those who came later, for the wilderness gone and the wilderness still left — inside and outside us."
—Primus St. John, author of Dreamer:Poems (Carnegie Mellon, 1990)

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"West of Paradise conjures the rural Northwest's colorful characters and the hard-edged codes they live by.... Here, too, are the places we love — Hells Canyon, the Wallowas, the Imnaha River — all carved knife blade sharp. Once again, George Venn offers a collection to treasure."
—Craig Lesley, author of The Sky Fisherman (Houghton Mifflin,1995)

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"In West of Paradise, George Venn's…poems explore that ambiguous relationship between the security of personal place, and the freedom of public geography. As a reader, I come away more carefully balanced within our contested cultural and natural environments."
—Alex Kuo, author of Chinese Opera (Asia 2000) 1998

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"George Venn’s poems are written in a spirit of careful exploration and unguarded wonder. This collection is an adventurous cross between cartography and lyrical soliloquy. Venn…seeks his truths…by instinct and by physical immersion in the lethal beauty of the Pacific Northwest. "
—Brian Bedard, Editor, South Dakota Review

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