Poetry Reading: Carlos Reyes and Richard Robbins

Annie Bloom's welcomes local poets Carlos Reyes and Richard Robbins to read from their latest collections.

About The Four Hinges of the World:

If there are four corners to the world, certainly there must be four hinges. And there must be at least four doors supported by those hinges. The poems in The Four Hinges of the World take us through those doors. Behind each, Reyes offers the reader a chance for a distinctive look at the world. Like most of Reyes's work, these poems are loose autobiographies. Reyes's poems reflect his experiences, which find their beginnings in the Caribbean, in South America, and in Europe.

Carlos Reyes, a noted poet and translator, is the author of Osage Elegy (2021), Lament for Us All (2021), Along the Flaggy Shore, (2018); Selected translations: Poemas de amor y locura/Poems of Love and Madness (2013); A memoir: The Keys to the Cottage, Stories from the West of Ireland (2015). The Four Hinges of the World (2023) is his fifteenth volume. Three times finalist for the National Poetry Series, he is often a Pushcart Prize nominee. He lives at the skirt of a dormant volcano in Portland, OR.

About The Oratory of All Souls:

No matter their location or occasion, the poems in The Oratory of All Souls attempt to center themselves in fundamental human concerns, especially those connected to personal and community suffering. Their sources are memory, the historical moment, the local objects that encompass each, and the terrible love of our imagination.

Richard Robbins was raised in California and Montana, taught in Minnesota for many years, and recently returned west to Oregon. In 2017 Lynx House Press published his sixth book of poems, Body Turn to Rain: New & Selected Poems, and in February 2023 it published his seventh, The Oratory of All Souls. Over the years, he has been fortunate to receive awards or residencies from The Loft Literary Center, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, and Willapa Bay AiR. From 1986-2014, Robbins directed the Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State Mankato, where he continued to teach in the creative writing program until retiring in May 2021.