Turning the pages of the first half of 2018

What I've read so far this year:

• Wooden Lions, by Karla K. Morton, former Texas poet laureate, my annual poetry book from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum's Western Heritage Awards. Every poem features an animal, from cats to copperheads.
• The Paper Trail by Alexander Monro, about the fascinating history of a revolutionary invention that has changed the world, paper. We think the western world is civilized. The Chinese have been centuries ahead of us in so many ways, and paper was part of it.
• Enchantment and Exploitation-The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range, by William DeBuys. Not a new book, but I finished it this year about my beloved Sangre de Cristos in New Mexico.
• Cave of Bones, by Anne Hillerman. My one fiction so far this year, a mystery set in New Mexico by the daughter of a favorite Tony Hillerman.
• Under the Table, A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide, by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick. Cocktails from A to Z, from the Roaring 20s and beyond, garnished with tales of a dazzling writer and woman.
• Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting, Edgar A. Whitney. Part of my DIY art school by the late master.
• Falling Upward, by Fr. Richard Rohr. Reread this spiritual guide for the second half of life.
• The Best Cook in the World, by Rick Bragg.

Next: Atlas of the Lost World, Travels in Ice Age America, by Craig Childs.

In the news recently, one fourth of Americans haven't read a book in a year. How shallow and provincial in thought and character.

Always learning about New Mexico

"Why haven't I heard about this author before?" "Why do I not know where that is?"
It seems I'm always learning about New Mexico, and "social" media has been a blessing as it has introduced me to several sites, and many photographers and artists that I "follow," (that's scroll through from time to time), 
Yes, I save some of the images for ideas for paintings, or links to books, or other people, admittedly envious of their comments and photos as they capture the scenery of the state, while I'm limited to one or two visits a year.
But I have my books and magazines to substitute for being there. A comment on Instagram last night got me to thinking about that growing collection. Most are on a bookshelf in a hutch and others here and there throughout the house. 
I counted 48 of them, plus two I can't find, and not counting the first editions of all the Tony Hillerman novels that are packed away in the garage, or I've given to my daughter Dallas Bell for her Canyon, Texas, Burrowing Owl Bookstore. 

But the collection keeps growing--every trip seems to bring a new purchase--me finding out things I didn't know. The ones in the house include some signed first editions, and others signed as well.
The most recent discovery, and purchases were for William DeBuys, after reading about him in New Mexico Magazine. In October I bought his signed book on Valles Caldera, and also this year River of Traps and Exploration and Exploitation, about the Sangre de Cristos--I'm almost through reading that one. The previous trip included an artist's book on her art in Truchas on the high road.

Other signed first editions include those of Santa Fe photographer and friend Craig Varjabedian. Earlier trips resulted in an artist's book on her art in Truchas on the high road to Taos. I'm always looking for art books, so Georgia in on my mind.
Inscribed first editions of Tony Hillerman landscape book, and his daughter's follow up, are by our door, along with another art book.

Then there's the hutch shelf
From left to right you'll find mostly non-fiction, lots on geology and history and art. Some fiction. Oh, at the top of the stack on the left is an inscribed first edition of Hillerman's first novel, The Blessing Way. At the bottom is a first edition of Laura Gilpin's valuable The Enduring Navajo, given to my Dad when he retired long ago  by his fellow tech artists.

And in the middle of the shelf is a signed paperback of Stanley Vestal's novel, The Old Santa Fe Trail, given to me by a student. Two I can't place at the moment  are about New Mexico railroads, and on on Pecos Pueblo, a special place to me, as you can see from other books.
The bear, Ursa, is by an Acoma Pueblo artist, C. Ortiz, that I bought in 2006 at the feast day of Santa Domingo Pueblo.

Two more books as the year is half gone

Does rereading books count toward a year's total? In this case, yes, and I finished two more this month, bringing to 15 read as the year is half gone.
When cleaning out books to give to my daughter, Booked to go, I parted with my Tony Hillerman books, except for one I had forgotten about.
It is a tattered and signed 1970 first edition of his first book, The Blessing Way, before he became famous. I bought this book at a Society of Professional Journalists silent auction here years ago. 

If you didn't know, the late Hillerman was an Okie and first a journalist and covered Oklahoma politics and more for UPI. In fact, his novel A Fly on the Wall, set in a fictional state capital, which is obviously Oklahoma City and the state capitol building. 
 He'd given this book to a friend and another Oklahoma journalism icon, Carter  and Loretta Bradley, and they donated it to the auction. 
 Reading it again was like reading it for the first time, because it had been so long ago. In it, Joe Leaphorn is a young Navajo cop and Jim Chee hasn't been created yet. Leaphorn aged with Hillerman.

The back cover, young Hillerman

Reading this and seeing his inscription and photo on the back cover brings back memories, especially of my beloved New Mexico, and of the passing of time.

***

The second book I reread was Art and Fear, Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, a musician and a writer
I needed to go back through this heavily marked-up book, mark even more, to get me off my duff and back into watercolor painting.  Books like this are food.
I won't give you many excerpts without almost reprinting the entire book. 
But one stands out to me as a journalist:

"To the artist, art is a verb."

Here are pages I've obviously read well. It's not so much advice as philosophy and common ground on the emotions and mind set of what happens when you decide to make art.

Booked to go!

Books to go--Hillerman novels in front

How do you get rid of books? Actually you don't, because once read they're a part of you. But they do tend to accumulate.

Cleaning out shelves

I've tried a book sale, and that didn't work, other than just getting exercise carrying them out of the garage and back in at the end of the day. And yo can't just throw them away.
But I saw my opportunity as daughter Dallas and son-in-law Todd Bell want to open a bookstore in Canyon, Texas, and they're visiting garage sales and more, buying what they can. 
With her visit here this weekend, we started going through our shelves, and the ones under the bed, and in stacks on tables, and those in containers out in the garage, plus some from work. Some I'd collected and couldn't remember, or had never read, and they certainly went. 

So we started pulling them out, opening boxes, piling them up in various places in the house and garage to transfer  to her car. We filled her trunk and part of the back seat.
I think we parted with about 150 of them. Some you can't part with, yet--Heart of Darkness, Whitman, Blue Highways, A Moveable Feast, The Art Spirit, books given by my kids for Christmas, and so on. I still have my John McPhee and Ed Abbey and Ernie Pyle and Grizzly collections, my New Mexico and Larry McMurtry and poetry shelves, along with  my signed first editions. And of course my Dad's and my art books. Susan kept cookbooks and more.

From work

You go though the books, looking at the signed inscriptions on many, and the dates when I bought them. Lots of memories.  You start going through those, and you remember each one, and put a few aside to read again.
But I did give away my Tony Hillerman novels (except the first one, signed by him). I had many antique newspaper books, some writing books,  some 1920s novels, and gobs more, including National Geographic books.

Many of the recently bought and read books were easy to let go of. And I figured if many had been out in the garage for a while, they needed to go too--except for those special ones I don't have shelves for here.
What is amazing is I'm not sure you can tell we parted with any at all.

Books of two cities, and more

Stamped inside my  copy

Reading goes in spurts, for me, even with a goal of at least one a month.
After reading seven in the first two months of the year, the drought set in--much like the last month of my non-blogging blog, which was broken yesterday. The first seven are listed in The pages of February.

But our June trip to England and Scotland broke that dry spell, and in the summer months I consumed another 12 books.
The book that got me reading again, as we headed to London, was fittingly, Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities." I bought my copy 11+ years ago in Paris in the renowned bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. Other than the famous first few pages though, I'd never managed to get through it. But I finished it on the way home over the Atlantic. It also helped that we visited Dickens' home while we were there.
Since that time I've read four other novels, a book of short stories, three books of poetry,  and three non-fiction books. Some were terrific and two were pretty bad. By the way, I think I bought all of these at our two local bookstores, Best of Books and Full Circle, though a couple may be been purchased online.
Here they are.
Novels-- Three favorites and one much less so:

• Harper Lee, "Go Set a Watchman. I don't care what others say, this is an intense, good book. Here's what I wrote:  "Childhood is Gone".
• Craig Johnson, "Dry Bones," the latest Longmire novel. Back in February I read his short stories, "Wait for Signs," and while I love Longmire, Craig's short stories  are even better. 
• Anne Hillerman, "Rock With Wings." This is the second of her novels, following in her father Tony  Hillerman's
  
  steps, with the same characters. Set in New Mexico and Arizona, it's a good mystery.
• One not so favorite, Clive Cussler, "The Jungle." Actually an audio tape for driving across the expanse of West Texas. Forgettable. I know, he makes a bunch of money with these, so wish I was too. Suspense, yes. But too perfect, implausible. Rambo in print.

Poetry--There is a resurgence of poetry in Oklahoma, not fancy stuff, but with red clay on its boots. I am writing an article on the current Poet Laureate, Ben Myers, and you have to read a poet to even know what questions to ask. I had already read his most recent book, "Lapse Americana." And, I have met and reviewed the previous Poet Laureate, Nathan Brown, and picked up two of his books. As Ray Bradbury once wrote, reading poetry exercises muscles you don't usually use.  

• Myers, "Elegy for Trains."
• Brown, "Oklahoma Poems and their poets"; "Karma Crisis."

Short stories

• David Sedaris, "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk." I'd never read Sedaris, and couldn't get into longer books, so this was funny, and sometimes disturbing.

 Non-fiction--Two favorites and one not at all.

• Helen Macdonald, "H is for Hawk." This English woman's personal journey training a Goshawk, coping with death and the past. It helps that we visited Cambridge where she taught. 

• Gary Lantz, "Morning Comes to Elk Mountain." If you're an Okie, you should read this month by month tour of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. I thought I knew a bit about that area, but the book is stunning. Lantz knows the name of every plant, bug and more as he takes you through the seasons. Reminds me of the writing of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who knew all that kind of information in his nature writing.

• David Archibald, "Twilight of Abundance." I gave up on this doomsday book because of the irrational political hatred and anger in it. The author's thesis that the world is near collapse because our age of abundance is over seems somewhat supported, but it descends into a blame game.

Turning the pages of 2014

The second half of the year seemed slow in reading, compared to the first half when I consumed  11 books--almost reaching my goal of one a month for the year. Reading goes in spurts. Weeks go by without a book, and then when I'm hooked, it speeds up. 
The year ended with Unbroken, the WWII story of a remarkable American. Now a movie, the story from Laura Hillenbrand, the same writer of Seabiscuit, captured my imagination and emotions.
Before that were two books from Best of Books in Edmond, now owned by friends Joe and Nan Hight. Spirit of Steamboat, by Craig Johnson, whose books are the basis for the Longmire TV show, is a compelling Longmire tale different from his mysteries. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel was an interesting novel of post-apocalyptic America.
I'd forgotten I'd bought three art books from English watercolourist (Hey, that's the way the English spell it)  Ray Campbell Smith that gave me insights and inspiration, Fresh Watercolour, Landscapes in Watercolour and Watercolour Work-Out recommended by English blog friend, social media guru  and artist Ian McKendrick of Cambridge, Watercolourjourney.
Another short, entrancing  novel illustrated with watercolors by Neil Gaiman, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains  made me want to do the same.
Before that, already reviewed on this blog were River of Doubt, about TR, following the Roosevelt NPR program, Writing Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon, and Falling Upward, by Fr. Richard Rohr, which changed my life.
A stifling summer of sickness managed four books in July--One Hundred Years of Solitude, by famed Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which I got bored with and didn't finish; Spider Woman's Daughter, by Anne Hillerman, continuing the Tony Hillerman legacy; American Gods, my first read by Neil Gaiman; and Blackjacks and Blue Devils, by Jerry Wilson, printed by my friend Jeanetta Calhoun Mish's Mongrel Empire Press.

Six month total--14. The books of 2014--25.

Turning the pages of the first half of 2012

"One Hundred Years of Marriage" by Louise Farmer Smith (See the previous post) is book 12 of those read as the first half of the year comes to a close.  I thought I was behind, on one a month, but no. It's been an interesting reading

The two most previous books I've read are "Repetitions" by Doris Cohen about reincarnation,  and "Mack to the Rescue," Jim Lehrer's satire set in Oklahoma, with a one-eyed assistant governor who reminds me of George Nigh, and a whacko governeor who reminds me of Frank Keating. I know I'm late started reading these, but it was signed by the author, bought at Full Circle Book Store. http://www.fullcirclebooks.com/ Neat use of place names, for anyone who knows Oklahoma.  He makes up a couple of places, but I only found one error--aint' ever gonna be a Walmart in Waurika.

Just before that, I've read "Sagebrush and Paintbrush" about Charles Russell by Nancy Plain. I bought it in Fort Worth in the spring, visiting with my brother and the watercolor show at the Amon Carter. It's really a children's book, but I stll learned from it. And I bought and red the museum book with the show, "Romance Maker" by Rick Stewart, about Russell and showing the watercolor paintings. What you do learn though is that no printing can approach the grandeur of the original art.

About the same time was "After Custer," by Paul Hedrin, the winner of the Wrangler Award at the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, that I judged in nonfiction. The Oklahoma connect is that it's printed by the OU Press...and I've mentioned it in my current story on the OU Press in Oklahoma today, "Pressing On."

Here's the lead: "Custer was dead, and Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Morning Star were desperate." Paul Hedren's Wrangler-Award winning book, "After Custer, Loss and transformation in Sioux country. The Oklahoma connection--published by the OU press. Great reading. Makes you sad and ashamed of what white people did to the Indians in the name of "civilization."

• Before that were two poetry books by Oklahoma authors, reviewed here earlier    "Red Fields," and "Subterranean Red." http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/04/red-dirt-blood-titles-and-words.html
• In January I posted the reviews of Tony Hillerman's "Seldom Disappointed" and Friedman's "That Used To Be Us." http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/01/freedom-failure-turning-pages-in.html I've also reread M. Scott Momaday's book, "In the Bear's House," one evening, sitting on the back porch, and it gave me ideas of the convesation posts between a geezer and God in March. http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/03/geezer-and-god.html
• And there's the landmark "The River White" by Ken Hada of Ada and his brother Duane in Arkansas, reviewed here on the blog also. http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/01/rhythm-of-water-review.html
• I'd have to rank "The River White" and Hillerman as the favorite reads so far, just because of my personal interests.
• I have to thank Jeanetta Calound Mish of Mongrel Empire Press who introduced me to many of these authors. http://www.mongrelempire.org 

Freedom, failure--turning pages in January

Freedom--two books this month, about different kinds of freedom.


Hillerman country...if you're from New Mexico, or Oklahoma, I suspect you've read a lot of Tony Hillerman, his mystery novels of the Navajo Nation. I've got lots of first editions and a few signed ones. 
But  I found two I hadn't read, that are broader in interest in case you don't have the passion for New Mexico I have. I've finished them both since ordering them very late late last year.
I've already commented, about his memoirs Seldom Disappointed.


Just finished Finding Moon, set at the very violent end of the Vietnam war about a "mediocre editor at a mediocre newspaper" in Colorado, who goes searching for his death brother's child in SE Asia and finds freedom from self and the past and for others. Hillerman mentioned this novel in Seldom Disappointed. (Lots of terminology and narrative about the rigors of putting out a newspaper to spice it up for you journalists).

 Great line from the master storyteller and descriptor from the book: 
"Beyond her in the clearing skies beyond the skeletons of the murdered trees along the riverbank, the moon was rising."

 BTW, you can find these books on abe.com--an "aggregator" of used book stores and offerings you don't want to miss.


The second book is by Mel Stabin, renowned watercolor artist--Watercolor--Simple, Fast and Focused--about a different kind of freedom, the freedom to create and not control. http://www.melstabin.com/

My watercolors are stuck. I'm not growing as an artist. Most of that is my fault for not painting enough, but I need help--since I didn't go to art school, I've had to improvise my own, and there's not been much lately.


So I started looking at summer workshops to attend. I need to get outside of my comfort zone, so an art trip to New Mexico probably isn't the answer. I started searching, first at Cheap Joe's cheapjoes.com  in North Carolina. Joe is my kind of guy. Quit pharmacy in mid-life and now runs a huge supply store for art, and he's a terrific watercolor artist. But none of the workshops I'm interested in fit my schedule (late July, very early August).


I kept looking and found some up on the coast of Maine, and one in upstate New York, one taught by Stabin. He's also my kind of guy--mixing a career as an advertising art director in NYC with his painting. So I bought his book--also from abe.com, and already have ideas.

I particularly liked one sentence of his book--"If my watercolors are more successful than yours, it is because I have failed more often than you have."


Not quite true, since there are so many degrees of talent--but the lesson I even preach to my writing students. But if there's anything I as  "seasoned" type-AAA Capricorn needs, it's direction into what I love about watercolor...the freedom and lack of control that keeps me humble and allows me to paint great skies.  I've already taken his advice on big brushes trying to paint the picture at the top of this blog of moonset--and failed twice. I will keep trying.


And I'm trying to figure out how to afford the week-long workshop of Stabin's this summer.
The pages keep turning.

"Fiction is more real..."

So wrote Tony Hillerman in his memoir Seldom Disappointed, which I recently finished, collecting a signed first addition on abe.com, to go with the collection I have of almost all his works set in my beloved New Mexico and Southwest
Hillerman's http://harpercollins.com/authors/4488/Tony_Hillerman/index.aspx
been dead more than 10 years now, and I'm not sure how I missed reading this, except it was prompted by two friends' recently published novels that got me out of my reading slump at the end of the year.
How many books do you read and think, "Joe (or whoever) needs to read this"?

Seldom Disappointed is that kind of book, except I know of three readers who will devour it. First section of the book, growing up in Depression Oklahoma, will captivate my father-in-law Jay Henry, who grew up not too far from Hillerman's home. The section on being an infantryman in WWII is perfect for my friend Jim Baker, retired UCO history prof and expert in WWII. Third section deals with Hillerman's life as a journalist, starting here in Oklahoma, mentioning people I know including Carter Bradley, Mary Goddard and Howard Wilson and others, lambasting higher education and more. I'm buying a copy for Ben Blackstock, and one for Baker. Jay can borrow my copy.  Fourth part is about his fiction writing. As a result, I've purchased his only novel I hadn't read, Finding Moon, about Vietnam, and he lavishes praise on it as a favorite.

Back to the fiction. You only have to read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to know that. My Okie friends' novels, have so much reality in them they demand  your attention, more than just that they're largely set in Oklahoma and you can identify so closely with the landscapes.

I finished this week the works of two friends-- Kent Anderson's Cold Glory http://bkentanderson.com/books/cold-glory/and M. Scott Carter's Stealing Kevin's Heart. http://www.mscottcarter.com/ Kent grabs your attention as an Okie, with suspense and great detail about Oklahoma. I've got to get back to Fort Washita and see that Confederate cemetery. And his narrative of raising an autistic son is as powerful as his novel. Scott's book is tense--the kind that makes you want to not turn the page, but then have to. And how he gets inside a teenager's mind is astounding. His descriptions of Stillwater put you there. Both books can make you cry and laugh.

The other book, The Paris Correspondent, by Alan S. Cowell, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cowellshows the reality of past and present journalism--journalism when it was alive and full of characters, and today, amid corporate layoffs and cookie-cutter blandness. Shades of A Moveable Feast. Thanks to discovering this new author at Full Circle, I see he's written more such fiction, about journalism.

All of these books are the kind you want to underline passages in, because of the language craftsmanship and the healthy doses of reality. I restrained myself in Hillerman's book, since it is signed and first edition, and can't find the exact quote on reality in fiction, but if it's not exact, it is a paraphrase, and like fiction, a paraphrase of reality.

Turning the pages of 2011

Only 10.
So much for my goal of reading at least a book a month, something easily accomplished in previous years.

But thanks to two writing, published friends, at least there have been 10. Back in October there had been just five, and  Kent Anderson and M. Scott Carter published novels, Cold Glory http://bkentanderson.com/books/cold-glory/ and Stealing Kevin's Heart.http://www.mscottcarter.com/

That required trips to bookstores to get copies and authors' signatures. I'd already dipped into Kent's book, and then...Any visit to Full Circle Bookstore http://www.fullcirclebooks.com/ brings you surprises and discoveries, and before I left with Scott's signed book in my hands, I saw another on a shelf, The Paris Correspondent, A Novel of Newspapers, Then and Now, by New York Times journalist Alan S. Crowell. There's no way I--an old and proud journalist, can pass that up, and didn't.

I started Scott's novel, but soon  immersed myself in the Paris book. Along came the Oklahoma Creativity forum in Norman, and I bought Gregg Fraley's small novel, Jack's Notebook, which while not as tense emotionally as Scott's, was a clever, if pedantic way of describing creative problem solving.

Sometime after my trip to New Mexico in November to bury my uncle Mike, I turned again to Okie Tony Hillerman, found a signed first edition of his memoirs, Seldom Disappointed, which I had not read.
In December, I finished all of these. Comments on Hillerman, Carter, Anderson and Cowel's books in the next post.

For the record, the other five books included New Mexico photographer Craig Varjabedian's Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby, http://www.craigvarjabedian.com/ about his dramatic black and white photos, coinciding with his exhibition at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Getting to meet and work with him, and a signed first edition is a highlight of the autumn. See earlier article on this blog.

The other signed first edition was Hanging Men, poetry by fellow Oklahoma professor Alvin Turner, reviewed in august on this blog. Getting to meet him and have coffee was a bonus. Thanks to friend Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and Mongrel Empire Press http://mongrelempire.press.orgfor this opportunity. She's also responsible for me meeting Craig, but that's another story.

I started the year in January finishing Simon Winchester's Atlantic, one of myfavorite writers, and obviously a journalist.  An earlier discovery at Full Circle was Mary Oliver's   poetry, Blue Pastures. I also ready Calvin Trillin's About Alice, about his wife.

So while the middle of the year may have as been as dry in reading as the Oklahoma drought, at least the quality of these discoveries were welcome bookends to the year.

January books

January books...completed: Rilke's "Letters to a young poet," Erica Jong's "Seducing the Demon, Writing for my Life." and "Hillerman's Landscape, " by Hillerman and Strel, just completed. Three this year... y tu?

More on the Hillerman book soon. I know where Susan and I will be traveling this year. Into the land of the dine'.

Poetry corner

 

 Poetry corner shelf--middle shelf with Whitman as a bookend, pix of grandson Max, etc

.

In cleaning out the garage the other day, I came across some musty  poetry books, covers faded with age, and I knew I had to bring them in. We have a poetry corner in the front room bookcase, of our favorite poets and other books we've gathered along the way as we've discovered new poets, or remembered ones. So I've added to our poetry corner. It has a soft chair and warm floor lamp beside it, fairly close to the fireplace.

The only place I know in Oklahoma City that actually has a poetry corner, an entire room really, is Full Circle Bookstore.  I've always loved going in there in the winter when the fire is going, pulling a poetry book off the shelves and warming up inside and out.

We don't read poetry often, not often enough, but when you need poetry, you need poetry...even if just a little. It loosens the mind, makes you love the sound of words, and the images of words even more. The fiction writer Ray Bradbury, in his little book, "Zen and the Art of Writing," says writers should read poetry often because "it exercises muscles we don't use much."

So what poets have taken up residence in our house? There are three volumes of Whitman, of course. The old textbook I told you about, then a selection of poetry and photos  on death and dying, and then a small volume Susan gave me a few years ago as a gift, inscribed with a note saying she sees Whitman in my writing.

Then there are several volumes of Pablo Neruda. I love his work because you have the original Spanish on one page, and the English translation on the facing page.  You can see part of his life story in the movie Il Postino. At a writing conference in Albuquerque a few years ago we discovered Jimmy Santiago Baca, theChicano poet and legend, and we have some of his.

Also of southwest note, I have "Earth Apples," poetry and fire from the late Ed Abby, western troublemaker, author, rebel against progress, and icon. One valuable 1928 book "Turquoise Trail" is an anthology of New Mexico poetry with poems by Mary Austin, Willa Cather, Marsden Hartley, Paul Horgan, D.H. Lawrence, Vachel Lindsay, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Carl Sandburg and many more. I pick that book up and I'm back in The Land of Enchantment. Another is V.B. Price's "Chaco Trilogy."

From my years in Waurika, I have old copies of "Listen, The Prairies Speak" autographed by Vera Holding, and "A Prairie Woman Sings," by Waurikan Thelma Largent.

 Former American Laureate Billy Collins is in the house in "Sailing Alone Around the Room," and  "Nine Horses." I've got a 1967 Hallmark reprint of "The Poems of Doctor Zhivago," by Pasternak.

Recently I've started buying, every April,  the Wrangler Award winner in poetry from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. I'm a judge of their non-fiction contest, so we get free tickets. I'm struck by how these western poets--ranchers and rural people you've never hear of, capture images of the contemporary West. From two years ago I have "The Last Buffalo," haunting poems about the  decline of rural population in the Dakotas. And somewhere in this house is last years' winner, "Poems from Dry Creek."

Who else in on the shelf? An old volume of Rod McKuen stuff from hippie days.  John Erskine's 1925 "Sonata and other poems." A  beautifully illustrated 1935 copy of A.E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad." A 1937 first edition of  Everett Wentworth Hill,'s "Toward the Sun."

Still missing somewhere in this house is "Silver in the Sun," a very old book about the Canadian north.

In 2006 my mother's baby brother, E.T. Culp of Nacogdoches, Republic of Texas,  gave me a 1940 volume of Robert Service poetry, "Rhymes of a Rolling Stone." He could even quote from it. It was the last time I saw him, and his signature in it is a special gift now that he has died. No wonder I love the musty smell of old books.

Going through all those books  and arranging the poetry books makes me think I also need a John McPhee shelf, a Tony Hillerman corner, a Larry McMurtry corner,  a Joseph Conrad nook, a Harry Potter line, two New Mexico shelves... and at least a couple of shelves of books about writing. My art books already occupy two full shelves in the studio. But we're running out of shelves and corners and aren't that organized. If it was too organized, it'd be boring.

But having a poetry corner isn't. Why? ...

"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,

And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,

I mourn'd and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring.

"Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love."

Cabin view

Watercolor

If I had a cabin, this is the view I'd like. Mount Blanca, in Southern Colorado, the Navajos' Sacred Mountain of the East. From a photograph in my new book by Anne Hillerman and her photographer husband Don Strel, "Hillerman Landscape." They trace in words and photos the locations her late father Tony used in his outstanding mystery stories set in the Navajo and Zuni Southwest of my beloved New Mexico and Arizona.

I got this great first edition, signed by the authors, from a bookstore in Albuquerque. You can find relatively inexpensive copies of this and many other new and used books at abe.com.

I've been struggling for days to paint clouds, and this book and this photo made it possible, including the cloud shadows, always adding to the drama of the landscape. In the west, mountains are the roots of clouds, and all creation is one, something the Navajo know, but the white man has forgotten.