I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico
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I sleep between the moons of New Mexico— sunset and sunrise. My bed is the yellow-ocher grasses dotted with green juniper and pinyon. I am the summer sun climbing from the life-giving phase into the deadly phase-- like the rattlesnake, deadly and life-giving, that blends into the yellow grasses as it careens along the canyon’s face. I cover myself with the blue mountains, with moon-like stars. I am the spirit of wonderment. I am a spell upon every living being in my path.
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About the Book
The poems in I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico are as condensed and glittering as the facets of a diamond. Words are used with a beautiful, powerful economy that expresses healing, anti-war, nature, the human experience, and other large themes. This is imagistic poetry that combines the complex metaphorical emotion and meaning of Emily Dickenson with the intense visual language of an H.D. or Amy Lowell. Davis's skill as a pastel artist has been metamorphised into words that explore an interior New Mexico landscape as spare, extravagant, and unique as a Steller's Jay flashing blue wings against the backdrop of soaring red cliffs.
About the Author
Ethel Mortenson Davis lives in the mountain community of Continental Divide, NM. Trained as an artist at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, her poetry is intensely visual, demonstrating the same life, color, and movement of her pastels. A member of the Zuni Mountain Poets, her poetry has influenced a number of New Mexico poets. Her lines often seem to have a beautiful simplicity concentrated on the magical landscape of New Mexico, evoking the high desert, red rock cliffs, elk, tarantulas, cactus, and the Native, Hispanic, and Anglo residents of the area, but the outward simplicity and short lines can be misleading. This is a poetry of intense emotion, reflection on her mid-western United States roots, and themes hidden in elegant, highly condensed metaphor.