Our Barn In Summer: Remembering Portersville

About the Book

Author's note: I'm in my mid-eighties, and I've just finished writing this collection of poems drawn from my boyhood years. They're not poems about my early life-they're poems from my early life.

Each poem arose from a separate journey. I went back, became the boy I once was, then took a snapshot of something happening in that place and time.

The place is a small farming and coal mining community in Western Pennsylvania. The time is my boyhood years, 1929-1937 or thereabouts.

I'm sending these snapshots to my children and grandchildren. I'm also offering them to you, hoping you'll enjoy them.

Robert Oliver
August 2008

About the Author

Robert Oliver spent all his early years in the small farming and coal mining community celebrated in this book of verse. His adult life has taken a varied path: WWII (destroyer duty in the North Atlantic, aircraft carrier duty in the Pacific), the business world (management consulting), the music world (bass soloist in two Stravinsky world premieres, oratorio and opera performances in Europe and North America), and clinical psychology. He is retired and lives in Los Angeles.