In a secular age, poetry dealing with religious subjects and employing religious imagery may seem anachronistic, but with Madeline DeFrees's poetry this is not the case. The individual's search for enlightenment, the continual shock to the senses, the ambiguity of good and evil, and the tension between hope and despair are some of DeFrees's themes. Her life as a writer has been relatively quiet, but her interior life is intense. As she has continued to publish books and poems, her reputation has grown steadily, so that her work commands respect and attention from reviewers and readers alike.

Madeline DeFrees, the daughter of Clarence C. and Mary McCoy DeFrees, was born on 18 November 1919 in Ontario, Oregon, in the far eastern part of the state, and moved with her family to Hillsboro, on the western side of the Oregon Cascades, when she was about four. She attended St. Matthew's Grade...