Introductions to poetry collections can be a letdown for a reader, mapping too definitively terrain that should be left unexplored until one reaches the end. The introduction to George Payerle’s latest collection, however, poignantly explores the reason behind the “trip” of the title (and the trips recollected throughout the collection), without revealing every landmark along the way.

The Last Trip to Oregon memorializes the deep friendship between two poets, Payerle and Charles Marian “Red” Lillard. Their final trip together to visit Red’s aging father in Oregon becomes a metaphor for all of life’s journeys, including those in poetry. The six sections of poems here form an archeology of sorts, words found and replaced as memories of a long friendship unfold. In meeting Red the poet, historian, bushman, family man, and Alaskan, we encounter the spirit of place.

Ideas and memories are approached along alternate routes leading to the same place, always deepening our understanding of Payerle’s final destinations: all roads become the last trip to Oregon. Some observations at first seem unrelated to Payerle’s time with Red, but they soon approach the very lessons that their friendship explored, from the possibilities of the sacred nature of union to our hope for continuity through dreams.

Occasionally a poem stretches toward the romantic, neglecting the work’s initial focus. Payerle may reinvent that moment in a later poem, though, bringing direction to an earlier thought that now appears as a simple hesitation on the way to grasping the extraordinary. Payerle’s simple poetic lines highlight this effect, especially in the shorter poems. The collection finally becomes a celebration, an encomium that leaves the realm of personal consolation and venerates the possibility of achieving fulfillment in the wider world.