Light and Burn - David Oliveira

Originally from California’s Central Valley, David Oliveira is included in the poetry school collectively known as "The Fresno Poets." He lived many years in Santa Barbara, where he founded the Santa Barbara Poetry Series, and was named the city’s millennial poet laureate. He co-founded, with Cynthia Anderson, Mille Grazie Press, and was a founding editor, along with Jackson Wheeler, of Solo poetry journal. He is included in several important anthologies, among them: California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present; and The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese American Poetry. He’s written three previous collections: A Little Travel Story (Harbor Mountain Press); As Everyone Goes (TreeHouse Press), and Still Life with Coffee (Brandenburg Press). He is editor of the acclaimed anthology How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets (Heyday Books), with co-editors, Christopher Buckley and M.L. Williams.

He is also the inventor of Poet Cards, a trading-card series featuring poets.

He lives and writes on the banks of the Mekong River near Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

David Oliveira, in Light and Burn, may have written the most quietly devastating book of our generation. Set in Cambodia among echoes of the Pol Pot massacre of 1979, Oliveira is carrying huge grief for his husband’s death, and for the end of his own life, as well as for the possible death of our species in these terrible times. Oliveira’s poems are beautifully put together, subtly rhymed and unrhymed, but always in the elevated language of poetry. These poems often sparkle with lively humor. Often there’s despair in the face of unbearable loss. The brilliant final section of Light and Burn is wonderfully awake. It aches with aliveness, and in the way of the finest poetry, breaks our hearts.

- Mary Ann McFadden, Poet Laureate of Ventura County, author of Rosa Mundi and Devil Dear

Light and Burn is David Oliveira’s major work, his magnum opus, his letter to the world from the far country where he resides. And no doubt the world has not written back enough, but Reader, I promise you this, read Light and Burn, and you will experience the beauty and sorrow and the gentle, rueful laughter that restores our souls. This book is the promise of poetry, fulfilled.

- Marsha de la O, author of Creature

David Oliveira, an orphic poet, writes about the world with humility and compassion, a perfect balance of personal experience and philosophical reflection. As his mind turns toward the moment of fierce attention, suffused with a sense of place, David locates our own place in the world by harmonizing common pain with the small and complicated graces of living. All of David’s work feels large, extraordinary in his watchful, deep wisdom, and acceptance. The legacy of his poetry is his willingness to love in abundance. He offers us his earned wisdom.

- Mary Kay Rummel, Poet Laureate Emerita of Ventura County, author of Little River of Amazements