letterfromoutofblue

April 14, 2017

Dear Anonymous Letter Writer

Dear Anonymous Letter Writer:

I received your anonymous letter in the mail yesterday afternoon and read it immediately in my Beaverwood Writing Studio while drinking mint tea. At the time your letter arrived, I was working on a long, strange essay about my youth in Oregon City that I am writing for no discernible reason except that I can’t seem to stop. Perhaps I am onto something important. It feels that way.

Actually, I read your letter three times because it was extraordinary. Your wise and uplifting words found me at precisely the right time I needed to read them. I can hardly believe that is a coincidence. I can hardy believe you discovered the new blog, let alone that mentioned taking a recommendation from the site and are enjoying Jim Harrison’s Dalva. This reminds me yet again how cosmic this novel is in my life and charts a path where I want to return in my life.

Thank you for the time and palpable care you expended on my behalf. You made me think about where I am going these days and almost brought me to tears when you wrote, “Thank you for being a teacher even now.” Reading that sentence instantly brought to mind this electric idea: perhaps I am engaged in the greatest teaching gig of my life and didn’t even realize. But what am I teaching? Who am I teaching (besides myself)? These are questions rich in possibilities for me to answer.

I would like to correspond with you in the old-fashioned manner you shrewdly employed to reach out to me. Would that be okay? I need an address and a name would nice as well. You can also reach me through the web site to move things along quicker, but sometimes slow is better.

Thank you again. It truly was incredible to realize that receiving a letter from a total stranger could produce such keen insights and warm feelings within me. I sincerely hope I get to read more of your words to me.

Matt Love

PS: I have another book recommendation for you. Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, about his Zen-infused trek to the Himalayans to spot an elusive creature. I am rereading this book for the fifth time right now and it has taken all new meaning. It’s providing the clarity I need.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.