"In the orchard of this poet’s work, the reader is never allowed to forget that without the trees and the branches, there would be neither blossoms nor fruit. Mehrhoff shines in his feeling for origi-nal essence and timeless truth. He offers us genuine memoirs of the gods. As Rumi expressed it, his readers can see not just the images, but the Painter."

H.F. Noyes
introduction to A FAREWELL OF SORTS, Hummingbird Press

Some words on Mehrhoff
There is no other poet. I won’t read anyone else.

Something in the syntax, in the rhythm, makes Charlie’s poems sound like they’ve always existed somewhere but we just didn’t know about it until he scratched his way through the page to reveal what was on the other side.

These poems demand to be voiced aloud. During a couple of years when I lived in Paris, I collected a sheaf of poems that Charlie sent, and some friends and I made a weekly midnight ritual of going down to the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge in the center of the city, for a savage recitation. We shouted these poems into the wind, some read from loose leaf pages in our fists, others from memory. We were alight with cheap red wine and ablaze with zeal for the power on our tongues, and we surely did no justice to the poems—but the poems brought us back to the river, midnight after midnight.

Years later, I’m leading a more tranquil life on the other side of the world from the Pont des Arts, but I still occasionally take a few pages onto my balcony in the evenings along with a slightly better bottle of red wine, and pleasure in the feel of the old words on my lips, the old fiery breath in my throat. No other poetry does this.


Andrew Koch
Zacatecas: A Review of Contemporary Word

"'Read this.' A bearded man hands a book to the new neighbor who is locked out of her home in the rain. The Collected Poems of Lucian Blaga. He offers chai, talk, a handshake....the forms of friendship.

Thus I am introduced to Charlie Mehrhoff and his many ways of giving: as poet, scholar, mentor, carpenter, neighbor, mystic. A deep-belly voice generous with praise: for others’ words, for the wind, the barn swallow, his luminous wife, Nora, music and now for Isabelle, child of Colorado pine, burgeoning poet-in-residence.

Thank you, Charlie, for what Stuart Perkoff calls 'the form of love,' for receiving and passing it on to us, your lucky friends and readers."

Sabine Miller, 2003
in her afterword to A FAREWELL OF SORTS

"When I first encountered Charlie Mehrhoff’s poetry, it was like crossing the footbridge, and realizing the bugling Sandhill Cranes had returned.

Whether his words sound holy or irreverent, they never lack vitality.

When he writes from the silence he is seeking, he often reaches a place so deep, he hardly recognizes what he has touched himself. As he probes, the words keep pouring through him to reveal a vision that rings so true, we wonder how we could have missed or forgotten it ourselves. A voice whose resonance compels us to keep listening and listening.... "

Phyllis Walsh, 1995
editor of Hummingbird Press

"Charlie Mehrhoff is a brilliant imagist poet in the same way fire garnets are brilliant...deepest blood source, condensed and burning...burning.

Mehrhoff perfects his work in the night places of soul and psyche where all jewels are first formed. From out of that mysterium, he casts toward us his glowing poems, each nuance faceted by hand. His vision is completely that of the gemstone cutter; impeccable, masterful, the humble worker of the kinds of light found only in the dark -- those so needed to light the way for the precious soul."

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D,
author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, and The Faithful Gardener.

"Charlie Mehrhoff’s poetry is a fierce rejoicing with the muse,
his pen an impassioned ax slicing weathered grain of heartwood.

His breath-taking clarity maws truth and beauty, fuels fire that heats a grateful heart. With mouth harp, he sings the poem to set it free. Transparent the song, mote of pollen swept away with it becomes fruit flesh to feast on, seed to grow forests.

He’s a visionary in steel-toed boots stuffed with hay questioning without question what moves us. His irony a riverbed, voice a rock he kneels upon stroke of pen an offering. His focus is of a monk akin to a cowboy’s need for solitude, spurs, red meat to cut into. A carpenter’s certitude of tresses. Gaze a grove a scarecrow at play in the shadow of a plough. Raising his chalice of antlers to contain a desert sky.

Pointing at the wind, the words it wears passing through
prayer flags, battle flags, flags of surrender, love.

Rebecca Pirtle,
publisher of Epictetus Press

LETTING IT GET TO YOU

This is a rage of poetry - a cry of poetry, as
one says a watch of nightingales.

It makes criticism wince and shrivel.

To realize root value, earth value, dirt value,
where human and nature might meet - in the
breath of space.

Here language is feeling intelligence - no
longer descriptive, never ornamental - to
let the spirit enter and lift.

He lets it speak through him:

“light years from the mist which rises from
the elk’s mouth” - milk.

“the smell of soil when first kicked up by
a light rain” - savor.

“a glimpse of the sky
through a drop of dew” - vision.

“the loneliness of God” - sympathy.

“as lost
as the day birth found me” - discovery.

“of the stars
we must not even speak” - silence.

“i bend a few strands of tall grass into my pocket,
move on” - Walt’s no longer having to wait.

“breeze in the pocket
watch you run” - let’s let go.

Cid Corman, longtime editor of ORIGIN
Kyoto, Japan 1995
from the introduction to Complete With Tongue

©Charlie Mehrhoff. Artwork ©Yona Sammartino.