Books

Conference of the Crows offers a field guide to voices rising from immersion in wild places. The poet meets and honors madrone, fir, loon, wren, rattler, balsamroot, fern, and all such cousins—all precious citizens of forest and desert, river and ocean wave. Speaking of a creature, to a creature, or in the voice of a creature, Opila’s poems enter into conversation, asking, seeing, honoring the vibrant lives surrounding and sustaining the human. Whether in a city park or the Owyhee desert, Opila steps close to grow by each encounter. These are poems to companion your own forays beyond screens, wires, machines, and streets. Carry this book into the open, and savor it.
—Kim Stafford, author of Singer Come from Afar

In Francis Opila’s debut poetry collection, Conference of the Crows, he asks the reader “How do you pray in a murder of crows? / Sometimes it’s call and response / Sometimes we wail with heartache / Sometimes we follow the woodpecker’s drum / Sometimes we bow our heads.” This confounding question and many others reveal Opila’s passionate and spiritual journey of discovery and exploration. There is quiet and exhilaration as in “Listen to Whoever Flies or Sings” and “Beyond Wings.” Most of his poems are filled with love, loss, joy, wonder, and gratitude. His beautiful and compassionate collection ponders profound questions and tries to provide a revelatory path toward understanding them. He is not afraid to open his heart and invite us in.
—Sherri Levine, author of Stealing Flowers from the Neighbors

Francis Opila is an adventurer, now in the mind of a crow, now in the hunger of a three-legged coyote, now in the terror of an escaping rattlesnake. Because of his shape-shifting, it’s tempting to say his keen attention catches everything we miss, including our larger stories of cruelty and destruction. And yet, with a steady voice in a book that is gentle and brave, he illuminates the world he steps into ahead of us
—John C. Morrison, author of Monkey Island and Heaven of the Moment

Francis Opila is an astute and authentic observer of the natural world—but he does much more: he worships at its altar. Passionate and reverent about the flora and fauna that populate Conference of the Crows, he disdains no creature, honoring even rattlesnakes and moles. All beings and environments are opportunities for communion—for instance, the unassuming moth: “…only the gold dust / of your wings remains, / spilled like incense in a shrine.” An epic six-page poem, “Roll On Columbia: An Epilogue,” inspired by the centerpiece of Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Songs, is especially compelling. All the poems in Conference… are engaging, informative and inspiring, even those that address destruction of the environment. Authoritative yet humble, Opila’s clear and compassionate poetic voice deserves to be heard.
—Leah Stenson, author of Life Revised and editor of Reverberations from Fukushima: 50 Japanese Poets Speak Out