New Mexico Books

I love the book. It tells alot about my culture that is not shared anymore. He also shares how unique and beautiful our culture is. It also gives me a connection with my grandfather. When I read the book it seems as if he is right there telling me what he wrote. He shares how things used to be in his time and how they began to change.

It is extremely difficult to capture the spirit of an arts scene: all the different voices, different faces, different stories, different dramas, large and small. "A Bigger Boat" aimed extremely high by trying to capture the vital and diverse poetry slam scene of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and succeeded with this quirky, history-filled and utterly poetic volume. Brief essays by numerous New Mexican poets who have made the poetry slam in Albuquerque what is today help walk the reader through its eventful and homespun ten year history. National voices -- such as New York City's Taylor Mali and Shappy Seasholtz, Texas's Mike Henry, Phil West & Bob Whoopeecat Stephenson and Chicago's own (Poetry Slam founder) Marc Smith, among others -- help expand the book's vision when it showcases the 2005 National Poetry Slam, which Albuquerque not only hosted but Team Albuquerque also won. Controversy is not shied away from, criticism is not hidden from view and yet this book is not merely a collection of gossip and "back in the day" tales. It is an important regional catalogue, a family album for a true family poets. And to top it all, the book is filled to the brim with incredible examples of Albuquerque slam poetry at its best, both group work and solo pieces, spanning all ten years, PLUS selected works from some of the best poets who performed at their National Poetry Slam. The end product? A history book that reads like a perfect blending of poets' journals -- stories, faces and verse all unifying to tell a story which could've only happened in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

There ought to be a name for this genre. The jacket blurb says "nature/Southwest literature". But Annie Dillard did this in the Northeast and Edward Abbey did it all over the Southwest and down rivers. Everett Ruess and Ann Zwinger did it in SE Utah with superb sketches and wood cuts. C.L. Rawlins and Gretel Ehrlich do it in Wyoming with sketches and photographs. Stanley Crawford did it with *Mayordomo* and *A Garlic Testament* a few miles SE of Tom Ireland in the Embudo Valley between Taos and Santa Fe (or halfway to Los Alamos - whichever way your crow flies).

"People who bond with 'place' and then write about it with philosophical comments and profound/funny/zen-like observations along the way" is a bit cumbersome. These people out-Thoreau Thoreau (and I'm from Thoreau, New Mexico [heh heh]; I ought to know). All these authors (and more) do this thing superbly well, in their own unique voices, but all the same, the genre deserves a better name than "nature/Southwest" or "nature/Northeast."

Ireland has added a new dimension with Angie Coleman's joyful paintings of exactly this same country round about. [I've debated about extracting and framing these paintings - still debating. Think I'll have to buy another copy of the book.]

This author reproduces his encounters with his Spanish and Indian neighbors (sometimes poignant, somtimes frustrating, always funny). These little essays/vignettes stand by themselves, but at the very end, the writer includes a story about La Pascualita - a real person who sweeps the roads with her broom and is housed and adopted by the entire community of La Madera. Ireland weaves her into a story that is reminiscent of Rudolfo Anaya, but very much his own.

And his piece about Magdalena, the magpie he adopted, is an original for sure.

"Walking around with a bird on your head is like watching life from a tenement window." "What's the collective noun for magpies? How about 'complaint'? There's a complaint of magpies in a cottonwood on the hillside across the river."

He watches the ravens of La Junta: "I was still standing there when the raven blew up over the cliff and almost into my face. It must have scared him almost as much as it scared me, to be riding the blast sixty feet off the ground and then all of a sudden to be facing a man. He shat, climbed up over the reach of harm, and held there at the closest safe distance to look again, reassembling his world into the kind of order he trusted it to have. (Ravens up. Men down.) Then he spoke. It was a sort of rattle, as much from the bowel as from the throat, and in it there was both fear and outrage: 'This cliff is taken. You are not wanted here.' He drifted north, riding the thermal, checking to see if there were any more of me around, then fell up and away into the bottomless sky."

About roosters: "...their voices make me think of the smell of joss sticks because *things mean things:" the rooster means incense, and the helicopter means searching the river for the body of a dead man, and I deceive myself that at eight o'clock this morning the real work will begin. Things mean things: the substance of faith, what we live for, those meanings, those coincidences of sky & rain & thought that jump at us."

He makes you feel like you're perching on his shoulder, looking through his eyes, seeing what he sees, hearing what he hears, and understanding through his mind and heart.

"Towards evening, the sun dropped into a corridor between the clouds and the little valley was filled with pink light. I put down my shovel and stood under a juniper to witness the change. It was like being in an aquarium: immersed, the bare cottonwoods, the hillside, the vacant house across the river, the fence posts, my own hands acquired a light of their own. The air filled with sugary spines of ice, and a rainbow appeared, its northern pole planted in the willows of a neighbor's cow pasture. I could see impossible distances in every direction; up the valley to La Zorra, down the crooked Valleciros, up the canada behind Vigil's store - as if I could see around corners."

All through these reflections are little personal musings:

"What is it about the presence of parents that makes us feel something less than alive, when they're the ones responsible for bringing us here in the first place?"

About dreams and water: "To wake in the dark and peel off the skin of your dream: to go out in the dark in the wet yard where drops of water hang from the asparagus berries and the night sounds are swamp sounds, sounds of water. And this our dry land smells like water and the creek runs brown."

And about work: "Ulceration of the spirit. It seems that when I have a job, my life becomes the job and not much else. There is no true rest and no true work until it's over."

"...we have made our joy depend on our work, and having come this far, we can't renounce it, can't be free from it, but only look for freedom in it."

"When I stand outside watching the clouds and the birds, I'm doing my work. These things need to be studied and praised, at least reported on."

And report he does. The title of the book comes from a quote by Malcolm Lowry, "You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair."

This is a beautiful little gem of a book with lovely paintings, anecdotes and musings - the kind of book to keep by your bed and pick up and read at random. It's also a book to read all the way through from the beginning - more than once. In a word - delight. Five stars - easy.

pamhan99@aol.com

The revolution against the Mexican Federal government in the state of Morelos south of Mexico City beginning in 1910 and lasting most of the decade left forty percent of the inhabitants dead or refugees. The revolutionary Zapatistas--followers of Emiliano Zapata--were mainly a farmer and peasant group aiming to keep hold of their land and gain political rights against the large landholders, primarily sugar growers, who had the support of the government. The growth of the sugar farms under the ownership of Mexico's traditional large landholders of the upper class was a main economic area of industrialization in Mexico. As seen by Hart, the historical course leading up to the bloody, devastating, doomed revolution in Morelos begins in about 1840, The U. S. invasion of Mexico in the Mexican-American War of this decade and later French intervention helped to shaped Mexican internal events giving rise later to the Zapatista Revolution as well as the rebellion of Pancho Villa in the north. Although the Zapatista Revolution failed militarily, Hart shows how some of its social and political aims nonetheless came to be reflected in the government and society. Chief among these were redistribution of land and wealth, the political inclusion of the oppressed peasantry, and cooperative, somewhat socialistic or communitarian communities. Rather than a reactionary group trying to hold back industrialization and related modernization, Hart sees the Zapatistas as "peasants and workers...trying to realize their own vision of the future" with fairly sophisticated, timely ideas and ideals. By broadening the historical time frame and the subject matter for comprehension of the early 20th century revolution in Morelos, Hart puts much of Mexican history and society since the mid 1800s in a new light.

I ran across this series by Steven Havill a while back as a Books in Motion audiobook (now available through Audible) read by Rusty Nelson. They are straight police procedurals set in New Mexico. Nelson reads them with a marvelous gravely voice that is perfect for the character and setting. Havill has also written a series with the Undersheriff's deputy Estelle as the main character. They are all very entertaining and I plan on reading (listening) to the entire series. I highly recommend them.

For anyone studying Native American history and lore, this book is an important resource. It at once explains, expands and corrects the many misconceptions and inaccuracies in Neihardt's "Black Elk Speaks" and provides a new perspective on Black Elk's, the person's, life. Rice debunks many of the myths created by Neihardt, and puts Black Elk's words back into their proper perspective.

Anyone who seriously intends to discover Bl;ack Elk and his meanings must read this book. After you do, you might understand part of the reason Native People dislike the pseudo-spiritual "new age" importance so many misguided folks place on the fictional poetry of John Neihardt.

These are wild and wolly tales of the mining rushes in southern New Mexico at the turn of the century. He tells of miners having to climb onto the roof of their cabins to get away from the grizzly bears. He relates vividly life in Hillsboro and surrounding areas: gold strikes, 4 day drunks, dance halls and ladies of the evening. Don't miss this one.

If you're at all interested in "places" and cultures of the U.S. Southwest, this is an outstanding book. Coupling rigorous research with fine and respectful storytelling, the author gives the reader a great sense of the Zuni people and where they live. Dodge expertly explores what "place" means in this specific context, but also gives us significant pause to think about "place" more abstractly.

I thought the story was a fantastic story would like to see more western books by the same author

This novel fully captures the psychological essence of what it means to be the western hero in a world where modern times tend to make the term obsolete. Howeveer, this book is not just for those interested in westerns, in also manages to take hold of what it means to be just a "regular" person in America. The storyline captures the reader, and moves them along the countryside, engrossing them in the story that unfolds. Border Crossings is a great read.