Having just renewed my library card (I have a fee based card on account of living outside the city limits), I went wild over at the shelving area known as the Hugh Morrow section. Okay, it was a toned-down wild, as I was in the library for goodness sakes.

I brought home a lot of books. Some with maps, some with newspaper clippings, some with old photographs, etc. All those kinds of books that history buffs like to read.

I found something that surprised me while I was handling every book I could on those book shelves. I found a book of poetry. Poems about Oregon. Poems about History. Poems about…the history of the Willamette Valley!!!

I have read this book, and plan to read it again before I return it. I would actually like to buy a copy, but can’t find it anywhere. I don’t know how many were printed, and all I can find out about it is that it was self published by Clinton Frederick Blake in 1925, but I believe the author used a pen name. I will surely search the records, if at all possible, of the sources that the author mentions, but so far I have come up with no leads about this book or the author. I wonder why the poets were not named, because in the one edition of “The Lariat (1927, volumes 9-10)” that I found online, the poets were indeed mentioned. Of course, the poems from “The Poems from Old Champoeg” were not in that particular volume of the “The Lariat;” they are from a previous edition.

This book is a curiosity indeed!

Please, read and enjoy this book.

poems-from-old-champoeg