Peggy Pond Church

Foretaste, Poems (Southwest Heritage) Peggy Pond Church

''Here are pages with delicately-carved poems, fragrant with the sage of high mesas, light as a cirrus cloud, warm as red blood, vibrant as the strings of a violin. The reader catches glimpses, feels touches of the sensitive character of the poet, sensitive not so much to darkness as to light in all its nuances of color, movement, and design. Of acid there is not a trace. There are cloud-shadows, the flight of a fairy, altars, the turn of the earth, lilac roots, turquoise in the wind. The author has divided her book into two parts, but the poems arrange themselves into four spheres: poems close to the earth, fantasy, sketches of children, glimpses of the native American Southwest. New Mexico is symbolized in a new way: placid burros become ancient hills; chili burns with new fever; natives pray in the cool recesses of a church under an anciently carved statue of Joseph; sheep and goats whiten the rock-ribbed hills.'' (From The New Mexico Quarterly, February, 1934, Volume IV, Number 1.)