Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

Life and memories are like landscapes. Images painted in words or on canvas illustrate what was and what may or may not be the same. Everything in life changes, even our memories, but most particularly the world around us, and that’s what triggers a reflective trip down memory lane. Landscapes Lost: Portraits of a Vanishing West by Christopher Dyrland-Marquis laments the reality that small towns have changed drastically over the past few decades. Some have disappeared completely, whereas others have become mega centers of commerce, or amalgamated with larger communities so that their individualism has vanished. The landscape of small towns has been all but obliterated from the memories of most people, as things change at such an alarming pace. As stated in the opening lines of the poem Wheatgrass: “There is a place existing only in my memories, as the original has long since slipped into time./ But its image remains as clear to me as it was when I first saw it; a quiet landscape of fields.”

Christopher Dyrland-Marquis’s chapbook Landscapes Lost: Portraits of a Vanishing West is a touching collection of word paintings and poetry that evokes images of landscapes from an almost forgotten past. Written in a variety of poetic forms, from narrative to free verse to measured meters and rhyming verse, the poet reflects on his memories of places in the western United States, examining the sights, sounds, and, most significantly, the culture of small-town America. Whilst most of the changing landscape can be a result of progress, development, and the influx of ‘modern’ industry, there are just as many landscapes that have disappeared due to wildfires and other natural disasters. The poems are snapshots of what once was, traditions of a simpler time, a simpler life. “In stride across a distant savannah,/ I marveled at land wherein memory, none roamed./ Who’s grass and kochia branch grew high in leagues,/ And shifting ground lay in-between.” The poems are accompanied by simple black and white drawings, depicting images painted with poetic words. A gentle and thought-provoking read.