There's a poetry that is bred in the badlands of the Southwest, writing that mirrors the landscape. It is open, harsh, bald, beautiful in its rough-hewn way.
Call it "border poetry."Mexicans and Mexican-American poets work that terrain: Ricardo Sanchez, Alberto Rios, Rudy Anaya. But the latest example of the genre - and perhaps the best - is the new collection of verse by El Paso native Catherine Bowman. Bowman produces sentences that are loose and strong - like straps of leather or strips of jerky. The tone feels almost masculine, yet driven by longing, love, anger and a pure prairie passion.
This, from the title poem:
In the orchard, leafless and barren,
the needle eye chickens
scratch for a living
with their cracked chicken feet.
The few eggs they beget
are swollen and bug-infested.
Here, it's always one hundred degrees.
Here the plough is warped.
The thresher, the seed drill,
the disk harrow, hocked.
There's no pretty poetry on Desolation Row.
"Rock Farm" is the latest addition to the poetry series being produced by Gibbs Smith Publishers in Layton. It is a handsome book, with quirky black and "collage" illustrations by Tita Bowman.
The poet currently lives and teaches in New York and does book reviews for National Public Radio. But from "Rock Farm," one can tell her soul is forever tied to dusty West Texas. One gets an image of Bowman in class, reading over a student's snippet of postmodern minimalism, taking a bite out of the paper and declaring: "Not very nutritious, is it?"
Still, as readers work their way through this collection of sinewy poems about barren landscapes and hapless lives, surprises do happen. The Garden of Eden puts in an appearance - several times. Amid all the "body collectors," "dead spiders," "locusts," "sharks" and "piranhas" one finds an oasis of rich, living beauty.
Then one realizes: This book of poems is the living garden that has finally bloomed on the parched, old, unworkable "Rock Farm."