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New poetry publication from Oregon State University Press Coinciding with National Poetry Month, Oregon State University Press has just published collections by two of Oregon's foremost twentieth-century poets. The Collected Poems of Hazel Hall - Edited by John Witte and Afterword by Anita Helle (paperback, $19.95) Confined to a wheelchair since childhood, Hazel Hall viewed life from the window of an upper room in her family's house in Portland, making her voice especially resonant in these days of social distancing. To better observe passersby on the sidewalk, she positioned a small mirror on her windowsill. During her short career, she became one of the West's outstanding literary figures, a poet whose fierce, crystalline verse was frequently compared with that of Emily Dickinson. Her three books, published to critical acclaim in the 1920s, are reissued here in a single paperback volume for the first time. Read Anita Helle's essay, "Reflections on Hazel Hall in a Time of Pandemic" on the OSU Press blog. The Collected Poems of Ada Hastings Hedges - Edited by Alan L. Contreras and Ulrich H. Hardt and Afterword by Ingrid Wendt (paperback, $18.95) Ada Hastings Hedges was best known for her superb poems set in Oregon's high desert, writing in a style notable for precision, clarity, and smoothness of line. A poet of the city as well as the desert, she lived in Portland from 1910 until her death in 1980. Her work offers a compelling perspective on mid-century Portland life. In 1930 she published her only book, Desert Poems. That collection is reprinted here in its entirety, along with scores of additional poems published in a wide variety of venues, making this the first comprehensive collection of Hedges' work. Other events
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