Orlen is a wonderful poet and one of the best practitioners of free verse writing today. The sounds of his poems bang and glide.
Most fine poetry strikes the mind and heart.
This is true of Orlen as well, but his poems also strike the ear. He builds from memory, from old photographs, mental snapshots of the past, and he knows where to break a line and also how to break your heart. Hillringhouse in The Literary Review Steve Orlen was born and raised on Hillside Avenue in Holyoke, Massachusetts. His previous books of poetry include Permission to Speak, A Place at the Table , and The Bridge of Sighs . He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and in the low-residency Program at Warren Wilson College.