Jack Lorts

Jack Lorts, an ex-patriot from Suburbia, fled southern California some forty years ago to settle in rural Oregon. He has taught in small communities ever since, retiring in 2004 as superintendent of schools in Fossil, Oregon (population: 500). His poems have appeared widely, if infrequently, since the late 1950s in such places as Arizona Quarterly, English Journal, Kansas Quarterly, Oregon English, Oregon East, Fishtrap Anthology, Arsenic Lobster, Quantum Tao, etc. He has two chapbooks out from Pudding House: The Daughter Poems & Others (2008) and The Meeting-Place of Words (2010). In 2011, Finishing Line Press published his Dear Gilbert Sorrentino and Other Poems.

He has also assembled several "serial poems," thematically inner-connected poems by several different poets, including The Great Oregon Serial Poem (Talent House, 2001) and The Other Side of the Hill: A Trek Through Eastern Oregon by Poet (Ice River, 2003).

Active in Democratic state politics, he has chaired the DPO's Rural Caucus, been a candidate for the Oregon House of Representatives, attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention as a delegate, and is currently Mayor of Fossil, where he lives with Celia, his wife of fifty years. 

Complete Reading from Mountain Writers Series 2010

Destination Moon: Poem for the Poets II

Speaking with a Daughter Through the Glass...

The Cowboy's Funeral

The Jester