‘Twas the last second before Christmas, and all through your life were people intelligent enough to appreciate poetry books as a last-second/belated Christmas/Hanukkah/New Years/Christmas-season birthday present. Man, you have a cool entourage!

Personally, I think poetry books are some of the best gifts at any time of the year. I am, of course, biased, because I majored in poetry at the College of Santa Fe and could read poetry every second for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy as a clam. But poetry is indeed the gift that keeps on giving; give someone a novel and they’ll read it and perhaps like it, then (hopefully) pass it on to someone else to (hopefully) enjoy. But poetry is different in that you can pick up a poem on a Tuesday and it means one thing—pick it up Thursday it means another—or Sunday, yet another. It keeps being interesting.

So here are my picks for a few great poetry books to give (and receive!) this holiday season… Or any season, really.

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I attended the College of Santa Fe from August 2003 to May 2008, graduating with a BA in Creative Writing with concentrations in poetry, fiction and nonfiction and a minor in Journalism. As many current students, faculty and alums do, I have endless thoughts on the closing of CSF. While this isn’t a book review, as Thursday Book Club aims to be each week, it’s thoughts about words and their placement within a piece and how they come to be there – and that’s what books are made of, right?

It’s been said, or “proven” in some study or another, that Santa Fe contains more artists per capita than any other city in the US. Everyone you speak to, it seems, has done some sort of art, from the advertising manager in Tierra Contenta to the retired surgeon on Bishops Lodge Road. For some, this is a rewarding experience, as if everyone around understands art, has a love for it and wishes to improve upon themselves, artistically. For others, it’s not so much of a blessing.

A few years ago a friend of mine, who had only recently moved to Santa Fe, was planning to move away. When I asked her why, she said: “I was coming here to be a photographer. To stand out. But everyone’s a photographer. Everyone stands out.”

I would perhaps have felt the same way as she did, only about poetry, were it not for the College of Santa Fe. I had been planning on attending the school since I was 16 years old. I attended the school from 2003 to 2008, and I would do those five years again in a heartbeat. Well, I would if I could. But I can’t, and neither can anyone else, ever, it seems.

The professors at the College of Santa Fe took their craft seriously (well, still do, I suppose, only they won’t be CSF professors while they do it any more). In addition to that, however – and this is what makes them different from most people who take their craft seriously – they take their students’ craft just as seriously.
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Barack Obama’s inauguration will probably stand out as one of the highlights of the whole of 2009. You may say I’m jumping the gun on that one, but I’m gonna call it.

There were lots of memorable moments: the fudging up of the vows, Rev. Joseph Lowery getting all fancy-like while saying the names Malia and Sasha, and a performance of a new John Williams piece by quite the multi-racial quartet that was later outed as the orchestral version of a lip-synch. Tsk, tsk.

There were also a number of poets and poetry enthusiasts paying attention to Elizabeth Alexander’s poem, “Praise Song for the Day” (text available here care of the New York Times). Here are a few local writers’ takes on the poem. Continue reading »