I did a lot of summer reading this year. For years I’ve been working on two big New Mexico-themed projects so I’ve been reading essays, anthologies, tracking down art books. Here is a survey of what I’ve been reading so far.
Poems of the American West, Everyman’s Library Pocket Series, Edited by Robert Mezey, 2002
This book proves an editor really does set the tone and style of an anthology. Mezey has somewhat modern and abstract tastes, which I liked, but would have liked a wider survey of different styles. His "west" goes all the way to Canada and out to California.
Turquoise Land, Poetry anthology from the New Mexico State Poetry Society, 1974 and Sandscript, volume 2 of the NM State Poetry Society, 1976
Although there are plenty of what you might call amateurish pieces here, (or what I prefer to call workshop poems), I found some of the best ALBQ landscape poems in these books. Most ALBQ poems I’ve found so far have been very urban (to be expected), but I’m always been attracted to ones that deal with land forms around the city.
New Mexico Poetry Renaissance, Edited by Sharon Niederman and Miriam Sagan, 1994
This is my favorite anthology so far. This book provided me with my longest list of poets to investigate further and involves a good, short sampling of each poet with some biographical information.
The Turquoise Trail, Edited by Alice Corbin Henderson, 1928
This is the first anthology of gringo poetry in New Mexico. It primarily samples the Santa Fe and Taos poets of the 20s and 30s. I found a few poets to investigate later. What frustrated me most about this book was just trying to locate a copy; it proved how lacking historically significant books of New Mexico literature are from its public libraries. You might find some of these books in reference sections if at all. They’re not being reprinted and not being repurchased for the libraries although I found my copy for $6 on ebay.
I experienced the same issue with the Santa Fe novels Fire in the Night, 1934, by Raymond Otis and No Quarter Given by Paul Horgan, 1935. I had to find those two on Abe’s online bookstore for rare books.
The Selected Poems of John Gould Fletcher, 1988
One of the poets I pursued after reading The Turquoise Trail was John Gould Fletcher. I liked his poem “Rain in the Desert.” Fletcher made a few trips to Santa Fe in the 1930s and was on the periphery of editor Alice Corbin Henderson’s circle. This anthology has a sprinkling of Arizona Poems including “Cliff Dwelling,” “Rain in the Desert”, and other southwestern poems like “The Last Frontier,” “Crucifixion of the Skyscraper” (which reflects the New Mexico circles dis-satisfaction with urban areas), “On Mesa Verde ” and “The Burning Mountain” (I wonder if this is about the Sangre de Cristos). Fletcher was a southern Calvanist and the bulk of his work is gloomy and fate-obsessed and not about the southwest.
In Company, An Anthology of New Mexico Poets After 1960, Edited by Lee Bartlett, V.B. Price, and Dianne Edenfield Edwards, 2004
This one was a total slog including copious amounts of modern and experimental poetry (which, in its defense, it admits to in its subtitle). Most poems were decidedly not about New Mexico or the idea of place (fair enough). But 520+ pages of this point of view was too much and mostly unremarkable stacked up against other, more famous, experimental work. I may have been less harsh after only 250+ pages.
I also came across a self-published book while visiting the ghost town of Chloride, New Mexico. This is one of the remaining ghost towns which actually courts tourists. It has a gift store, a museum and a café and the town is only one street long! The book I found was South to Southwest by Patsy Crow King. She says these are poems for her grand-kids and it looks like my copy was one of ten printed. All the pages are printed fully bolded and in a big font. Certain poems have words missing, capitals misused, errors in punctuation (although she lead her local creative writing group and won some of its prizes as president and contest chair). She also includes some of her husband’s poems in the book. But that said, she's actually an interesting rhymer and there are three poems of historical interest, one on Chaco Canyon, one on Monument Valley, and one rare gem about the ghost town of White Oaks, New Mexico.
Other recommended NM Lit Books
Santa Fe & Taos, The Writer’s Era, 1916-1941, Marta Weigle and Kyle Fiore, 1994
This is an amazing book filled with historical yet gossipy details about 1920s/30s Anglo writers who settled in Santa Fe and Taos.
Spud Johnson & Laughing Horse by Sharyn R. Udall, 1994
After you read Santa Fe & Taos, The Writer’s Era, you’ll want to get a hold of this book. Again, missing from New Mexico libraries. I found it on Abe’s Books.
The Southwest in American Literature and Art, The Rise of the Desert Aesthetic by David W. Teague.
I bought this book in Paris of all places. It’s a bit dry but these are fascinating essays on the change in American aesthetic consciousness among Europeans, the very idea of the west and how artists and writers contributed to changing those ideas about what was beautiful and transcendent about a landscape.
The Desert is No Lady, Southwestern Landscapes in Women’s Writing and Art, Edited by Vera Norwood and Janice Monk
Textbook like in size and depth but, again, essays with amazing overviews of southwestern landscape writing from many more perspectives: Native American, Hispanic, Cowboy/the Anglo settler, and the modern artistic zones of New Mexico today.
Past books I’ve read:
The Modern West: American Landscapes, 2006
A coffee table book on modernism in western photographs and art. But the best overview of western landscape concepts.
Adobe Odes by Pat Mora, 2006
The Desert is No Lady lead me to Hispanic poet Pat Mora. These odes are full-bodied reflections of New Mexico.
Mud Woman, Poems from the Clay by Nora Naranjo-Morse, 1992
Meditative and lyrical poems about clay-building and the experience of commerce in Indian markets. The book includes fascinating photos of her pieces.
Sun and Saddle Leather, Charles Badger Clark, Jr., 1915
A tiny volume of cowboy poems in older forms.
Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp, collected by John A. Lomax, 1927
This was my grandmother’s book. Recently I found a list of old southwestern and Mexican ballads my grandfather loved when he was 19 back in the 1920s. I’m still looking for a recording of a song called “Friendless and Sad”…it wasn’t in here.
Red Earth, Poems of New Mexico, Alice Corbin Henderson, 1920
You can find cheap knock-offs on Amazon but stick it out for a nice hardback copy reprinted from The Museum of New Mexico. It includes artworks matched to the poems. Considering Henderson was the ringleader of the poets in The Turquoise Trail and that fact that Henderson was co-founder of Poetry Magazine with Harriet Monroe, I had high hopes for this book. I was disappointed, but there are a few evocative moments.
Fray Angelico Chavez, Selected Poems, 1969 
Chavez is a poet from Wagon Mound originally, known to be a Catholic historical revisionist. I wanted to sense some kind of locality in this slim chapbook of poems but they were mostly kind of dry.
Place as Purpose, Poetry from the Western States, Edited by Martha Ronk and Paul Vangelisti, 2002
Los Angeles' Autry Museum published this book of poets who just happen to be from the western states, not necessarily poetry about the western states. And again, we’re talking about western states here as opposed to southwestern states. Lots of experimental pieces. Annoyingly, there’s no table of contents.
Along the Chisholm Trail and Other Poems, George Rhodes, 2012
Not specifically a New Mexico book but this one was a winner in the Independent Book Awards. It has a great cover and some poems I liked. Mostly contains cowboy forms. Cowboy forms are good to read but get old after large quantities are consumed, much like experimental pieces.
Cactus and Pine, Songs of the Southwest, Sharlot M. Hall, 2006
Hall is an Arizona historical figure and this is a collection of her poems I picked up at her museum in Prescott, Arizona. She hated the idea that Arizona and New Mexico were once proposed to exist as one big state.
Cowboy Poetry Matters, From Abilene to the Mainstream, Contemporary Cowboy Writing, Edited by Robert McDowell, 2000
This is Story Line Press' gesture to bring back cowboy poetry (along with other forms). The movement gets a bit too political for me (see my essay about this topic, Writing in the Age of Narcissism), but this is actually a good anthology of poets writing in this genre sort of now.
Cowboy Love Poetry, Edited by Paddy Calistro, Jack Lamb and Jean Penn, 1994
Way over-designed but a good anthology.
Selected Poems of Jimmy Santiago Baca, 2009
Baca is a famous local poet with a personal story of triumph. The movie, A Place to Stand, based on his life does not yet have a distribution deal I’ve seen a version of it that was beautiful and captivating.
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