One of the pluses of getting accepted in a print journal is receiving a small book of poems by many poets, at least some of whom are likely to be new to me.
I am currently reading my way through the 2017-2018 issue of Red Coyote, out of the University of South Dakota, which includes two of my poems, “Hold On, Let Go,” and “Corners.”
I’m finding a lot to like. One poet new to me is Carol Barrett. Of her three poems I am particularly impressed with “The America Dream,” a short and subtle piece. Here is the poem, by permission of the author:
The American Dream
Frosted grasses
bear the shadows
of pines
once peopling these plains.
Cars laden with dust
loom on every hill
along the path
paved to make our journey
swift. A bluing sky
melts the crystalline
landscape, and on we plow
oblivious to those
who forage here,
to any shade
or sorrow.
As I was reading this, my mind made a series of pictures, some way off base, it turned out. In the first stanza—what’s the connection to the title?—the immediacy of the grasses made me think of walking beside them. Having this image in mind, I saw those looming cars on an Interstate above the path. Paved? Yes, where I live they persist in paving walking paths.
It’s only as “swift” sank in, and I felt the distance of “landscape” that I “got it.” The paved path is a road; I’m on that Interstate, if it is one, not beside it.
Because she doesn’t name it as road, and because she delays the fact that the pines are gone and doesn’t spell out why or how (removed for farming? cut down to build the road?) I have wandered inside her poem and so find myself complicit at the end in all that taking the fast road ignores or denies.
Thank you, Carol Barrett, for this reading experience. Carol has two books, Pansies, just out, and Calling in the Bones. I’m looking forward to reading both.
Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders Issue #23 has just arrived from the printer. It features the work of 48 contributors, mostly poets. Six are from southern New Mexico, seven from other parts of the state, a few more from the greater southwest. Others are from all over the country, from Washington State to Massachusetts to Florida, and three live beyond our nation’s borders.
I have a poem in the current issue of the Kerf, a small journal out of College of the Redwoods in northern California. This journal is part of the Del Norte Center for Writing of that college, which is located in Crescent City.
Weaving the Terrain is a large collection edited by David Meischen and Scott Wiggerman. It contains 211 poems, by many poets—a minority of the contributors have supplied more than one poem. The subject matter ranges across the southwestern states and over many themes. There are plenty of roadrunners, vultures and coyotes, historical moments both familiar and lesser known, and a lot of sand. There are personal stories as well, events that “just happen” to take place in a southwestern locale.
Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders #22 is out. It’s hard to believe that this is my seventh year as one of the editors, as other personnel have changed.
The cover art is by Tom Holland (www.tomhollandsouthwestart.com)
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