DENISE LOW INTERVIEWS DAVE SETER, SONOMA COUNTY POET LAUREATE

 Dave Setter is a rare poet who combines training as a scientist and a poet. As the new Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, a region about as big as Rhode Island, he presents readings and workshops in Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, and we have plans for an event in Healdsburg. His well-received book Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections, 2021) shows his original voice, shaded by the odic tradition of classical Greek-influenced poets, with narrative threads that remind me of the best West-influenced storytelling. Mammoth Publications is honored to present a chapbook (28 pages) of his new works, Somewhere West of the Mississippi.

DL: What are the main themes in your new book of poetry Somewhere West of the Mississippi (Mammoth Publications, 2025)?

DS: I explore the myth of the American West versus the reality of the American West; the abuse, and resilience, of the natural world; and the hope that the human species may play a part in healing nature while healing our collective soul.

DL: How does this new chapbook differ from your earlier books?

DS: While the ecological focus is similar to that of my full-length collection (Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections 2021), in this book I offer a more unfiltered view of the mine reclamation projects I led as a government official. There was a definite silencing of science during certain periods of our recent history, which led to fear of retribution for speaking out in public. I have also included a few experimental poems in this collection which explore topics difficult to relate in a purely narrative form. For example, I envision inhabiting a soybean plant killed by pesticide drift, wondering what it would be like to die a slow death.

DL: How does the title represent the book?

DS: This chapbook and my earlier chapbook (Night Duty) are both titled as subtle references to our movie culture. Many of the poems are documentary in nature. Night Duty is composed of film noir-style poems. Somewhere West of the Mississippi is composed of poems intended to create a sweeping vista of human experience in the American West within the context of its ecology. I wish the chapbook had an accompanying soundtrack, which is always a feature of the American Western.

DL: I love that, as soundtracks accompany us in so many contexts, since invention of ear buds! You have a background in science—how does that affect your writing?

DS: The language of my poems is, in many places, scientific. When I use scientific terms I try to place them in a context that makes them understandable to the general reader without “dumbing down” the science. I’m also uniquely positioned to offer a rare view into the inner workings of how environmental cleanups happen, their successes and limitations.

DL: The poems remain lyrical and balance facts well. You have been appointed Poet Laureate of Sonoma County. What do you plan to accomplish with this community honor?

DS: Because I self-identify as a poet of the ecology, or eco-poet, in the second half of my two-year term I intend to craft a series of nature writing workshops. Those workshops will be based on 17^th Century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō's concept of Zōka (the transformative power of nature). But for the first half, I have decided to challenge myself as well as other Sonoma County poets to write documentary poetry. Documentary poetry has no formal, fixed, definition, but generally calls attention to some injustice witnessed or heard of by the poet. One of the keys to writing a good documentary poem is to research facts about the injustice to add dimension to the poem.

DL: I appreciate your focus outside your ego while still using your experience and expertise. Anything else you would like to add?

DS: I want to thank Mammoth Publications for believing in this project. As Sonoma County Poet Laureate, I wanted to work with a small publisher in Sonoma County. Mammoth is that and more, a small publisher located in Healdsburg, California, with a compelling catalogue of impactful literature.

What My Uncle Is Trying to Say

Photos are silent but something’s said

the way his fur hat tilts down

and jacket hangs open even though

bare trees say cold and the windshield

of the Ford LTD publishes an icy scrawl.

Experts can tell the model year by the grille.

The license plate says Minnesota.

Crystals on the plate and on the lakes,

crystals in the air, ready to fall.

With low pressure snow will arrive

on the doorstep. Open the door.

This photograph is nothing.

He will charge inside like a ghost.

DAVE SETER, Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2024-2026,  is a poet, nature writer, reviewer, and essayist. He
authored the poetry collections Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections, 2021) and Night Duty (Main Street Rag, 2010). Educated as a civil engineer, he writes about social and environmental issues, including the intersections of the built world and natural world. His poems have won the KNOCK Ecolit Prize and received third place in the William Matthews competition. He is the recipient of two Pushcart nominations. His poetry book reviews have appeared in Cider Press Review, Poetry Flash, and Tupelo Quarterly. He is also studying Lithuanian and has translated poems by contemporary Lithuanian poets into English and published them in literary journals. He has been an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and has served on the Board of Directors of Marin Poetry Center. Seter earned his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Princeton University and his graduate degree in humanities from Dominican University of California.

LINDA RODRIGUEZ PUBLISHES DARK SISTER: POEMS

LINDA RODRIGUEZ, author of award-winning poetry and prose, publishes with Mammoth!

88 pages $16.00 ISBN Perfect-bound paper 978-1-939301-66-6  

Pre-order now for discount! $10.00 plus shipping PayPal or check. Kansas residents: Click this for tax. Others click here! Mail order: Mammoth Publications, 1916 Stratford Rd. Lawrence, KS 66044 $13 postpaid. Books available Feb. 1.

“I want to say so much about Rodriguez’s poetic gifts. What talent! The most accomplished poet of our generation. A poetic voice for our time.” ~Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima and Albuquerque

Click this link to Mammoth Publications website for further details.

Dark Sister: Poems gives voice to the living presence of Cherokee teachings and history, passed down through Linda Rodriguez’s family. Rodriguez, author of the exciting Cherokee detective series featuring  Skeet Bannion (St. Martin's/Minotaur Press), turns to family stories and memory for her third book of poetry. She testifies about the borderlands that still exist between Cherokee people and heirs of Andrew Jackson’s soldiers; between Americans and their British Isles forebears; and between the frontera of Mexico and southern plains states of the United States. She spares no quarter as she remembers history and its embodiment in the present. She tells compelling stories about the last Beloved Woman, Trickster, and other traditional figures with the sure hand of an oral storyteller and with the lyrical intensity of a skilled poet. In Dark Sister, the ageless Cherokee language and Spanish blend with English to explain the complexities of life as a mixed-blood woman in the 21^st century. This accessible book appeals to adults and young adult audiences with family stories, love stories, just-so stories, and more. 

 For her previous books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Linda Rodriguez has received numerous recognitions, including the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, the 2011 and 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Awards, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Rodriguez has edited four anthologies, most recently The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, co-edited with Diane Glancy. Her poetry has appeared in many national and regional journals and on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress, and New Letters on the Air. Her award-winning Skeet Bannion novels, all from St. Martin's/Minotaur, are: Every Broken Trust, Every Hidden Fear, and Every Last Secret, which won the 2011 St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition and was a Barnes & Noble mystery pick, featured by Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, and a finalist for the International Latino Book Award.

Mammoth Publishes SUSAN RIEKE, IRELAND’S WEATHER

 

Susan Rieke’s Ireland’sWeather mixes all the mythic beauty of Ireland with clear-eyed observations. Contemporary sights mingle with ageless natural wonders. Even a commonplace experience like dawn becomes extraordinary as  the poet notices how “the sun tilts with a side grin.”  Travel with this writerly companion to a landscape populated with robins, crows, bees, and “old demons.” The journey will change everything.

Cover art, Thomas F. Weso, art:, “Blue Storm,” private collection, Washington D.C. 2 illustrations by Thomas F. Weso. Published by Mammoth Publications. ISBN 978-1-939301-77-2

 

 

 

A Moon Slice

A moon slice opens evening’s gate, waning

into clouds. It cannot blaze like the sun,

but quiet night counts on her cold.

Velia, witch of the wood, weaves magic.

The moon creates again a light waltz

whose steps never fail.                                

A land of few sunrises and sunsets shouts

for attention when the moon mounts the sky.

Crows form a front team.

They command respect for this white goddess

who obliterates gray

and dark recesses of memory.

Order online  $10.00   www.mammothpublications.net, the Susan Rieke author tab. To order multiple copies or for inquires, contact mammothpubs [at] gmail.com  Order by mail: 1916 Stratford Road, Lawrence, KS 66044.  

CARAZA, GLANCY, AND GOLDBERG featured at the Mammoth 2015 AWP Reading April 11, Book Fair Stage 1, 10:30 a.m.

Save the date! Thanks to Mammoth Publications authors XANATH CARAZA, DIANE GLANCY AND CARYN MIRRIAM-GOLDBERG. They will be featured at Mammoth’s AWP 2015 reading, Minneapolis Conference! April 11, Saturday, in Minneapolis, 10:30 a.m. We will have a great reading from Mammoth authors Xanath Caraza, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, and Diane Glancy, including the new book Syllables of Wind / Silabas de viento by Xanath Caraza. This is the largest literary book fair in North America. A one-day pass for all Sat. programming is $40, a bargain. See AWP 2015 on FB for details https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/overview

MAMMOTH PUBLICATIONS REPORTS ITS NEWS: New Books, Reading Success, Author News

MAMMOTH WRITING NEWS, MAY, 2014

* NEW WEBSITE: www.mammothpublicatoins.net Mammoth was due for an update, and the new site has better navigation and organization. Please visit and comment. 

*MAMMOTH PUBLICATIONS on FACEBOOK. Please type our name into your Facebook search bar, and hit “Like.” Then you will get regular updates through Facebook.

*MAMMOTH READING APRIL 29, 2014, KU STUDENT UNION Jayhawk Ink Bookstore at KU was the site of a Mammoth author reunion and reading. Denise Low opened the event and described how E. Donald Two-Rivers’s book Powwow, Fatcats, and Other Indian Tales was the first Mammoth book in 2003. This was in association with Woodley Memorial Press, where Low was a board member at the time. Then Mammoth became independent, and LANGSTON HUGHES IN LAWRENCE, co-authored by Low and Tom Weso, was the next project. Tom Weso read from the Langston Hughes book and also his new food memoir.
 Barry Barnes, author of WE SLEEP IN A BURNING HOUSE, recited poems from his book and announced his participation in the International Cajun and Zydeco Festival in the Netherlands, the next day, with the Ernest James Zydeco Band. His photos on Facebook are amazing. Elizabeth Schultz read from WHITE-SKIN DEER: HOOPA STORIES, based on 1950s stories told to her by Hoopa elders.
Stephen Meats arrived from Pittsburg State University and read from DARK DOVE DESCENDING, his 2013 poetry and fiction book. Mammoth has just reissued a new edition of his book LOOKING FOR THE PALE EAGLE.

Global Green proprietors Julie Unruh and Oliver Hall showed their books, VEGETABLE GARDEN and GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, respectively, and read from them. Global Green is one of several groups that Mammoth cooperates with by counsel and other publication support. Thanks to them for a generous donation.

 Xánath Caraza finished the event with readings from her first book, CONJURO. Caraza’s awards include Number one Author of the 2013 Top Ten “New” Latino Authors to Watch (and Read) by LatinoStories.com. The International Latino Book Awards 2013 recognized CONJURO for Second Place: Best First Book Written in Spanish; Award Winning Finalist, Multicultural Fiction; and Honorable mention, Best First Book Written in Spanish, Mariposa Award. She has published two more books, What the Tide Brings In (Mouthfeel Press) and Noche de Colibríes: Ekphrastic Poems (2014) if from Pandora Lobo Estepario Press. Mammoth will publish another book of poetry in 2015. Mammoth is honored to be her first book publisher. Lisa Eitner of Jayhawk Ink facilitated the project and provided publicity. This is the second event for Mammoth sponsored by the KU bookstore, and we appreciate the support.

*MAMMOTH ASSOCIATE’S PROGRAM Mammoth has been able to advise several community groups and individuals involved with publishing. Mammoth associates include Global Green Publications, Parcel literary journal, A Kansas Bestiary and its authors, and more.  Look for “Published in association with Mammoth Publications” for this cooperative venture. Congratulations to Global Green Productions for their books VEGETABLE GARDEN, GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, and MLK. JR., MEMORIAL, words by Martin Luther King, Sculpture by Lei Yixin, and Photography by Oliver Hall. The book has been nominated for a Coretta Scott King Book Award. Global Green presented Mammoth Publications with the first copy of the book. We sincerely thank them.
MAMMOTH ANGELS APPEAR! If you have ever wondered what wooly mammoth angels looks like, they are not giant pachyderms with large wings. They are more subtle and appear in human form to us mortals. Two such angels have asked for our catalogue list and then bought every single book. That income has helped us pay for the next book set-up costs. We are not a non-profit, which helps us keep our independence. We appreciate the support of angels and all ordinary folk who buy our books, review them on media, give us encouragement, and otherwise act as angels.
NEW MAMMOTH BOOKS  Robert Day’s TALK TO STRANGERS AND STOP ON BY: Essays on William Stafford and Other Folk of the American High Plains, with an Introduction by Scott Bontz, was published just in time for the Washburn University William Stafford conference, March 30, 2014. Thank you to The Land Institute for a grant to help fund this publication. http://mammothpublications.net/writers-a-to-l/robert-p-day-we-should-have-come-by-water/
Stephen Meats has updated his 1994 collection of poetry LOOKING FOR THE PALE EAGLE and added interviews, revision notes, and a “Letter to a Young Poet.” http://mammothpublications.net/writers-m-to-z/meats-stephen-prose-and-poetry/
Caleb Puckett is the newest Mammoth author, and I hope to meet him one day soon! His FATE LINES / DESIRE LINES is poetry moving among histories and digital media. His experimental poetry satisfies the mind and makes emotional connections. http://mammothpublications.net/writers-m-to-z/puckett-caleb-fate-lines-desire-lines/
NEWS FROM MAMMOTH AUTHORS   Elizabeth Schultz has a new book of poetry, The SAUNTERING EYE, from FutureCycle Press. Join her and Mammoth friends when she reads from it at the Raven Bookstore May 22, Thursday, 7 pm.  Denise Low has a new book of poetry, her first since the award-winning Ghost Stories of the New West (Woodley 2010). MÉLANGE BLOCK (Red Mountain Press), blends Low’s ancestries with history and landscape to create aggregate-like poems. http://redmountainpress.us/melange-block-by-denise-low/ Readings are Santa Fe, June 15, 2:30 pm, op cit bookstore; June 25, Lawrence, Raven bookstore, 7 pm.  Xánath Caraza started a new international poetry project called “US Latino Poets en español.” This online poetry column is published monthly and is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum and Periódico de Poesía. She will be traveling summer 2014 and presenting readings in Spain, Portugal, and El Salvador.  Stephen Meats is working with another Mammoth author, William Sheldon, in preparing a book of interviews with Kansas writers. Mammoth will publish the book in 2015.  Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is working on three forthcoming books: Poem on the Range: A Poet Laureate's Love Song to Kansas (Coal City Press), Caryn's memoir about the political and geographic journey of her poet laureate years, will be out this summer; Chasing Weather: Tornadoes, Tempests, and Thunderous Skies in Word and Image (Ice Cube Press), her collaboration with weather photographer and storm chaser Stephen Locke, is being released in September; and Transformative Language Arts in Action, the anthology she's co-editing with Ruth Farmer, will be out toward the end of 2014.  Lana Wirt Myers reports she is retiring from her job with the Harvey County Historical Society spring of 2014. She has plans for another book. Her Mammoth book PRAIRIE RHYTHMS: THE LIFE AND POETRY OF MAY WILLIAMS WARD received a Kansas Notable Book recognition from the state library and Kansas Center for the book. 

MAMMOTH AUTHORS AND ALLIES, PLEASE LET US KNOW YOUR NEWS, AND WE’LL POST IT IN OUR NEXT NEWSLETTER.

 

Mammoth Publications Presents Chapbook APRIL

 

A new chapbook from Mammoth publications features selections from Denise Chevalier, Ken Eberhart, Louis Giron, Dana Guthrie Martin, Barbara Montes, and Alarie Tennille. These diverse writers document one month in their writing lives. These are participants, mostly, in a Writers Place poetry workshop April, 2013. The 24-page chapbook-- ISBN 9780984591268, $5@-- has photographs by Thomas Pecore Weso. Copies are available mammothpubs@gmail.com. Mammoth thanks these poets for their work. See www.mammothpublications.com for more about the press and its publications.

Mammoth has a busy publications schedule, and next up is Stephen Meat's prose and poetry collection Dark Dove Descending and Other Parables. He is a Pittsburg State professor, poetry editor of Midwest Review, and a fine, fine writer. Bill Sheldon is writing the introduction.

 

Xánath Caraza’ publishes "Floating Pink Shaman" after art by Thomas Weso in chapbook Corazon Pintado

Mammoth Publications, our small literary press in Lawrence  (www.mammothpublications.com ), is publishing Xánath Caraza’s Conjuro: Poems in September. This will be tri-lingual, in Spanish / English / Nahuatl. Before this comes out, enjoy her work in a new chapbook Corazon Pintado: Ekphrastic Poems (Kansas City: TL Press, 2012). One of my favorites is “Floating Pink Shaman,” based on the artwork of Thomas Pecore Weso. Caraza’s writing derives from her awareness of Indigenous thought: words are tangible objects, not abstractions, and capable of influencing physical reality’s web of interactions. Tom Weso, the artist, was raised by his grandparents on the Menominee Indian Nation reservation in northern Wisconsin, influenced by the Native American Church.

Floating Pink Shaman
            (After “Floating Pink Shaman” by Tom Weso)

A la derecha, tu resplandor

© 2011 Image by Thomas Pecore Weso

Noche rosada de mi primer sueno
Luz nocturna
Cá  lida arena
Hombre mágico que protege
Con las astas del venado
Al cactus de sabidurÍ a eterna
Generaciones de conocimiento
Corren port tus venas
Ser sagrado de arena
Bajo el cielo de la noche, eternal
 © Xánath Caraza

Floating Pink Shaman

            (After “Floating Pink Shaman” by Tom Weso)

To the right your gleaming light
Pink night of my first dream
Loneliness of the desert
Nocturnal light
Warm sand
With the antlers of the deer
Magical man that protects
The cactus of eternal wisdom
Generations of knowledge
Run through your veins
Sacred being of sand
Under the eternal night sky
© Xánath Caraza

© 2012Cover art by Chan

Xánath Caraza, from Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, has lived in Vermont and Kansas City. She has an M.A. in Romance Languages and lectures in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Missouri-Kansas. Her chapbook Corazón Pintado: Ekphrastic Poems is from TL Press (2012). She won the 2003 Ediciones Nuevo Espacio international short story contest in Spanish and was a 2008 finalist for the first international John Barry Award. She has published fiction and poetry widely in the United States, Mexico and Spain. Caraza is an advisory circle member of the Con Tinta literary organization and a former board member of the Latino Writers Collective in Kansas City. Her Day of the Dead artwork has been exhibited at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. She has taught in Mexico, China, Spain and the US. Caraza is currently working on First Friday in Kansas City: Short Stories, Flash Fiction and Poetry, forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press in 2013.

Mammoth Publications releases Bill Sheldon's RAIN COMES RIDING

Idyll

 The dog’s ashes work their way
deeper into the garden’s soil.
This season I walk alone,
The dirt road winding
Into darkening sky.
The horses no longer
come when called, and the wind
keens, “Winter is coming on.”
The rising moon rattles the dry grass,
and below, the dead
continue their long work.

To order email mammothpubs@hotmail.com $12 postpaid. RAIN COMES RIDING details poet William Sheldon’s passion for the Great Plains. People loom against the horizon—his family, neighbors, runaways, working men, and also the people who lived in this place before, whose scattered flint tools remain still unchanged. He is a poet who embraces fully the contradictions of simulated realities existing, fragmented, in a timeless universe of flint and bluestem grass. Sheldon is a skilled, smart writer who has much to tell his readers about how to live with good conscience.  This second book of the poet shows him creating a new genre of ballad. William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Ks., where he teaches. His book Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley), was named a 2002 Kansas City Star’s Noteworthy Book. He has an MFA from Wichita St. Univ.

Many poets of estimable value are called to mind by Bill Sheldon’s book: Kansas poets certainly (William Stafford, Steven Hind, Harley Elliot, Denise Low), and other-state poets with a knowing eye for the land, from the severe poems of Robinson Jeffers, to the more clement naturalism of Mary Oliver, to the savvy, stringent explorations of Wendell Berry.  How can one read Sheldon’s “Red” and not think of the poems of Phil Levine, their similar understanding of manual labor and the lives invested in that work?  I could go on in this vein, but… Sheldon is finally a practitioner of his own voice and vision—albeit one that takes its place happily in a community of other poets—and Rain Comes Riding, steeped in history and family, in an intimacy of place and sometimes a wry sense of humor, is the rich record of a career in which the world and the word have been lovingly wedded.” Albert Goldbarth, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award

Small Literary Press Mammoth Publications Rolls Out New Titles

My husband Thomas Weso, and I have a small press, Mammoth Publications, which is presenting a number of book events this fall:

1. Aug. 30 Sunday 4 pm Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, poet laureate of Kansas, performs poems and songs from her new book/CD LANDED, with co-lyricist and outstanding musician Kelley Hunt, at the Lawrence Public Library. Dinner on your own afterwards at Local Burger.

2. Sept. 4 We Should Have Come by Water: Poems by Robert Day, a fine press (handset type on fine paper) chapbook with prints by Kathy Jankus (representend by the Strecker-Nelson Gallery in Manhattan), limited edition! Signing party details to be announced). Robert Day received his MFA in poetry, but is better known as a prose writer. This is his first publication of poetry.

3. The White-Skin Deer: Hoopa Stories (signing & reading in Oct.) by Elizabeth Schultz

4. We are reprinting E. Donald Two-Rivers’ 2003 book Powwows, Fat Cats, & Other Indian Tales, late August

5. And we also will be publishing the collection of Ad Astra Poetry Project electronic broadsides, a Kansas poetry anthology with commentary by Denise Low, in cooperation with Washburn’s Center for Kansas Studies.

Advance copies of these books are available through www.mammothpublications.com or in Lawrence: the Raven Bookstore and Oread Bookstore.

Denise Low, former Ks. Poet Laureate

Denise Low's Ad Astra Poetry Blog

First, I am grateful for the honor of being selected for the next poet laureate of Kansas by the Kansas Arts Commission and Gov. Sibelius. Jonathan Holden is the first Kansas Poet Laureate, and his term runs until July, 2007. He has found wonderful ways to inaugurate this role, including a website, http://www.kansaspoets.com/ , and tel-net discussions of poetry with Kansas poets. More information is at http://arts.state.ks.us/

More information about my books can be found at http://www.mammothpublications.com/ .

To start, I want to post some of my writings in a serialized form for this blog, starting with this first essay from Words of a Prarie Alchemist. The print-text version is available from Steve Semken: http://www.icecubepress.com/

In this essay I try to express how important stories are to responsible connection to the environment. Do let me know what you think.


__________________________________________________________


American Indian Geography and Literature: Considerations for Writers
by Denise Low
copyright 2006


American Indian people know about survival, and one of their most important tools is literature. The transmission of memorized texts, and sometimes glyphic texts, from one generation to the next sustains cultural identity. One essential strategy of Native storytellers is linking narratives to specific sites. Through stories, Native inhabitants can associate a landscape with moral behavior; history; community identity; and “myth”—the connection between human and spiritual realms. Indigenous Americans continue to preserve literary accounts, and even some languages, after more than five-hundred years of contact with European, African, and other cultures. This success is hard to ignore.

Indigenous American culture groups have distinct categories of literature, including types of narratives. Anthropologist Keith Basso, who works with Western Apache people of Cibque, Arizona, studies their literary genres. He lived with a community family, learned the language, and sustained his dialogue with elders for many years. One of my students at Haskell Indian Nations University was a member of his host family, and she respected his work. Over the years, Basso came to understand that rather than poetry, fiction and drama, of the western European tradition, Apache people first sort language presentations into three types: ordinary talk, prayer, and literature (“narratives”). They further subdivide literature into sacred accounts (“myths”), historic tales, present day sagas, and gossip.

Stories of the second type, about history, always correlate with geography. Basso learned that Western Apache historical accounts further conjoin landmarks with moral lessons: “Historical tales focus on persons who suffer misfortune as the consequence of actions that violate Apache standards for acceptable social behavior.” These tales are linked to places “by an opening and closing line that identifies a place-name where the events in the narrative occurred.” Thus, the places become affixed to the morality tales, in part because of the titles. Landscape is a compendium of teachings....

One such story appears in Diné poet Luci Tapahonso’s works, and in addition to geographical information, it reinforces the “special” knowledge that gives her nation a distinct historic identity. “Just Past Shiprock” connects a New Mexico place to a tragic tale. The title itself is a location, and then the narrator of the poem continues to give more detailed directions:

…there were flat mesas, gentle sandhills, and a few houses scattered at distances. Mary pointed to a mesa as we rounded a curve and asked, “See those rocks at the bottom?” We stopped playing and moved around her to listen. The question was the opening for a story.

What would be a casual remark to most travelers here is a signal to the Diné children to stop and prepare for a story, similar to the Western Apache formula for the opening of a historical tale. The narrator “Mary’s” comment is strong enough to stop a group of noisy children and get their attention. “Mary” then continues to describe the rocks’ color and texture as well as location:
The rocks she pointed at were midway between the ground and the top of the rock pile. The mesa loomed behind, smooth and deep ochre. The rocks were on the shaded side of the mesa.

This much description of geologic formations would not be necessary unless the storyteller expected the listeners to remember the place. Only after the setting is clear does the narrator of the story, tell about a young couple that lost a baby and buried her under the same rocks that the children see from the road. “Mary” finishes the story within the story with a final emphasis on the place: “Those rocks might look like any others, but they’re special.” This sense of “special” is understated here, but it creates an emphasis for the children to remember both location and its human dimension. It emphasizes the site’s role in tribal history.

At the end of Tapahonso’s “Just Past Shiprock,” the narrator refers obliquely to non- Diné people’s dismissal of the desert-like region and concludes “This land that may seem arid and forlorn to the newcomer is full of stories which hold the sprits of the people, those who live here today and those who lived centuries and other worlds ago.” Again, like Western Apache texts, time is fused with a place through the agency of a narrative account. Tapahonso consciously translates a Diné genre of place-stories, about a land “full of stories,” into English. Loss of a child is tragic, so this is a lesson in grief and recovery from grief as well, and the assertion that no life is forgotten. Tapahonso’s story is one example of how use of landmarks creates a memorable historic text....[to be continued]