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Trio of local poets release new collections of work
Mary Ellen Capek, Lou Liberty and Juan J. Morales, three poets you may not have heard of, have recently published collections of their work. The poets deserve wider recognition.
Capek, of Corrales, said she’s been writing poetry since she could hold a pencil. “I have several thick folders full of it. … I did write poetry, but it mostly didn’t make sense. I didn’t have the words to describe what I was seeing,” Capek said.
Finally, at the urging of friends, her first collection of poems was published late last year—more than seven decades after she first wrapped her fingers around a pencil.
The collection, spanning 50 years, is titled “Love Lessons: Poems 1973-2023.”
In it, love takes many forms. Some of the poems, she said, are about her difficulties in not finding the words to describe the reality she was experiencing.
Others show the reader moments and people that Capek honestly and lovingly remembers.
Consider the atmosphere and the social awkwardness in a poem about an early dancing class: “We danced in the school basement./Strauss waltzes mingled with the smells of chocolate milk/and stale peanut butter sandwiches …”
Another, “All My Relations (Blackbird, Spider, Crow),” demonstrates the poet’s love of nature: “A blackbird fat with spring seeds, worms, and winter’s rest/swoops to the curb puddle.”
The collection has already received public acknowledgement. It was a finalist for the Feathered Quill Book Awards in Poetry.
“I think that part of the whole reason for my poetry is saying, ‘This is who I am,’” Capek said. “I am trying to write in a narrative that is understandable. I hope that comes across.”
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It does, indeed.
Over the years, Capek did find the words to help her get an education and teach others to write.
She holds a doctorate in contemporary American poetry. Early in her career, she spent five years teaching basic writing skills at Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey.
“Most of my students were Black and Hispanic. I think I learned more from them than they did from me. … What I learned was how much language is shaped by reality. The hope was to get them to understand their language skills and put it on paper,” Capek said.
Before the poetry collection, she had published three books, one a textbook on writing in context, another a “women’s thesaurus” and the third a book on philanthropy.
Capek shared an unpublished poem in honor of the famous Native artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a friend, neighbor and mentor who died last month.
The poem, “Flying Man, Dying Friend,” reads in part, “My friend is dying. She says she’s in the end zone, at peace. But I’m not/I want her news to be a bad dream. But it’s not.”
• • •
It’s close to half a century that Lou Liberty, a resident of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, has been walking in nature. She walks, takes a break to write, stands up, resumes walking. She writes poetry.
On her walks she is never without notebook and ballpoint pens tucked in a vest. Liberty goes out three or four times a week. She walks around the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park, Los Poblanos fields and nearby ditches. Sometimes she takes an all-terrain rolling walker.
Nature provides the subjects for Liberty’s poetry. Her latest collection is “Latitude N 35.1891 degrees Longitude W 106.6173 degrees: Poems of Place.”
The poems are among Liberty’s favorites that she’s written over several decades.
The collection is divided by season.
This is the opening stanza of the poem “Hard Birth” in the Spring section: “Mist rises from the fields and ponds/as if we were a water world instead of/a drought-stricken desert.”
In Summer is the poem “The Imperative”: In part, “Momentarily/confused,/a large dragonfly/and/a hummingbird/dance/with one another/before/parting in/disappointment.”
In Fall, her poem “Sandhill Cranes” opens with, “I think they/are dragons,/somehow/grown warm/and wise, …”
In Winter the poem “Winter Dreams” concludes with “I dream of/summer/sunflower/gardens.”
From 1968 to 2000, Liberty taught at Sandia Prep in multiple subjects, among them medieval/renaissance studies, literature, history and English.
“Everything informs my poetry,” Liberty said. “I also taught comparative mythology. That probably has had the most influence on my poetry. That and Oriental philosophies.”
The Japanese poetic forms of haiku and renga fascinate her. That fascination reveals a beauty and leanness in her writing style.
• • •
Juan J. Morales’ latest poetry book, “Dream of the Bird Tattoo: poems & sueñitos,” is about remembering the death of the poet’s father and grieving over his passing. Morales’ father, Jose, died on Feb. 2, 2019.
The poet said the anniversary of his death usually involves “this weird kind of tradition. I go to a quiet room and talk to him and check in.”
The bird in the title is revealed in the collection’s final poem. The previous poems are all worth reading, and the last one is worth waiting for.
At the start of the final, short prose-poem, a medium tells Juan that a strange bird would visit him. He kept watch, obsessing over every swallow and finch that visited his yard. He checked out a yellow prairie warbler, Mississippi kites whistling, hummingbirds, crows “dog-fighting with red-tailed hawks.”
“A few nights later,” Morales writes, “when my eyes closed, my deceased father stood before me with face obscured. His shoulder tattoo of la golondrina stirred. Then the swallow climbed off his shoulder as a green phoenix made of neon light. It shook its wings and told me, ‘This is the bird you are looking for.’”
It then flew out of the dream and woke him, “just like sunrise.”
Morales’ father — his personality, his sense of humor — is painted as a generous, likable personality. Puerto Rico, where his father was from, comes into play.
Overall, this is a thoughtfully, sensitively composed group of poems. The book is part of the University of New Mexico Press’ Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series.
Morales received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from UNM. He is an assistant professor of English at Colorado College.
