Book reviews: I write them, for I consider reviewing certain books a vital exercise for finding clarity in my own thinking. However, I try not to read reviews of my own books because my book is already written, after all, and I wrote it the way I did because that’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I thought I should do, and I did it the best way I knew how (and who the hell is that schmo anyway?) If some random reviewer doesn’t like it, TFB (tough frisbees). But of course… it’s too tempting… Yeah, I read them. The pay-off for this foolishness is that once in while there is a review that makes my whole month, and not so much because it tickles my ego (although it does) but because the reviewer so profoundly understood and appreciated what I was trying to do. And this one review somehow, truly, makes writing a book, and bringing it into the world, feel… sigh. Maybe a little less quixotic. Dear poetically-inclined reader, I point you to Greg Walkin’s review of Meteor.
> A recent Writers’ League of Texas Q & A with me about Meteor & etc. is here.
#
These days I am not writing much poetry because I am working on my memoir / portrait of Far West Texas and related podcasts and essays. But the Muse has her whims and wiggly ways. This is what happened last week when, weirdly, I was thinking of Federico García Lorca’s “Romance sonámbulo” as I read Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archäischer Torso Apollos.” Typed on a 1967 Hermes 3000. It’s a macaronic.
UPDATE: Joseph Hutchison has posted his elegant translation of Rilke’s poem plus some fascinating links to read more about it here.
BY C.M. MAYO — October 21, 2019 UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
Just last week the 2018 issue (vol. 30) of the Journal of Big Bend Studies landed in my mailbox. I am proud to say that this is my second publication in this excellent US-Mexico borderlands scholarly journal published by Sul Ross State University in the Big Bend of Far West Texas. (My essay on Francisco I. Madero’s secret book was my first publication in the JBBS.) This is the paper I presented at the Center for Big Bend Studies Association conference in 2017: “John Bigelow, Jr.: Officer in the Tenth U.S. Cavalry, Military Intellectual, and Nexus Between the West and the Eastern Establishment.”
It’s in some fine company in this issue. Herewith the table of contents:
From a Frederic Remington illustration in John Bigelow Jr.’s collected articles, On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo.
Whew!! Pictured here is my writing assistant, Uliberto Quetzalpugtl. Remembering all that work we did made him…sigh… take a siesta.
Writing such a lengthy, seriously-serious article all abristle with endnotes and straight-jacketed diction is unusual for me; my focus is writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Those of you who follow this blog well know that I have been at work on a memoir / portrait of Far West Texas– definitively creative nonfiction– for more than a little while now. It was because I had done a heap and a half of research on John Bigelow, Sr. in writing my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, that I knew there was much more to say about his son, John Bigelow, Jr., than I had come across in the literature on Texas and the Indian Wars and, well, I just felt I had to do it.
I find writing can be funny that way; for all one’s careful goal-setting and planning, sometimes a work seems to have a will of its own, to demand it be written, and in a certain way. This essay on John Bigelow, Jr. is one of those works. It truly surprised me. I hope it may prove of interest and useful to anyone looking at borderlands and military history, as well the genesis of ideas about the American West. Certainly, writing it has helped me further arrange the furniture, smooth out the rugs, and dust off the trophy heads in my thinking about Far West Texas.
I wrote “Sky Over El Nido” about 500 years ago (um, that would be sometime in the early ’90s). What’s interesting to me about it now is that it has what I thought of then as a net-like narrative structure, but that I now think of as Sandboxing with Fractals. At the time I was reading a lot of Douglas Glover, Kate Braverman, Jorge Luis Borges, Marguerite Feitlowitz, and Flannery O’Connor. It was a wicked lark to write.
You can read more about Sky Over El Nido over on my webpage, www.cmmayo.com. (…In 2020 I aim to get that verily ancient website into WordPress…)
I am delighted and honored to announce that my translation of Mexican writer Rose Mary Salum’s short story “La tía” as “The Aunt” appears in the shiny new Fall 2019 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader– check it out here. “The Aunt” is from The Water That Rocks the Silence, Salum’s collection of linked stories set in Lebanon, two other stories of which have previously appeared in Catamaran. Originally published in Spanish as El agua que mece el silencio (Vaso Roto, 2015), it won the International Latino Book Award and the prestigious Panamerican Award Carlos Montemayor.
>>Continue reading this story online here and some of Salum’s other work in Catamaran here.
Based in Santa Cruz, California, Catamaran is a stand-out on the West Coast literary scene, and, indeed, it is one of the finest English language literary magazines alive in the United States today.
Rose Mary Salum is not only a superb writer and poet, but she is one of Mexico’s most visionary editors, editor of Delta de arenas (an anthology of Arab, Jewish writing from Latin America), and founding editor of the literary magazineLiteral: Latin American Voices, Voces latinoamericanas and of Literal Publishing which, among others, publishes the “Deslocados” series of writing in Spanish by Latin Americans who live in the United States.
Here is a screenshot of her bio (and mine) from the current issue:
#
Back in 2013 I did a very fun in-depth interview with Rose Mary Salum about her work for my Conversations with Other Writers occasional series podcast. You can listen in anytime here and read the complete transcript of that interview here.
And the Houston Chronicle has a piece on Salum and her International Latino Book Award here.
August 2019 finds me on vacation. Nonetheless, each Monday this month I will be offering posts from the archive (as usual, look for a workshop post on the second Monday, Q & A with a fellow writer on the fourth Monday).
On the Trail of the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos
Originally posted on Madam Mayo blog November 3, 2015
Remote as they are, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of the US-Mexico border have a strangely magnetic pull. That may sound like a wild assertion, but the evidence comprises over 200 shamanistic rock art sites, many of them thousands of years old, and the fact that dozens of rock art enthusiasts, including myself, find themselves returning again and again.
It was on a meltingly hot August day in 2014 that I made my first foray into the canyonlands for the Rock Art Foundation’s visit to Meyers Spring. A speck of an oasis tucked into the vast desert just west of the Pecos, Meyers Spring’s limestone overhang is vibrant with petrographs, both ancient, but very faded, and of Plains Indians works including a brave on a galloping horse, an eagle, a sun, and what appears to be a missionary and his church.
I took home the realization that with Meyers Spring I had taken one nibble of the richest of banquets. In addition the rock art of the Plains Indians—Apaches and Comanches— of historic times, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands are filled with prehistoric art, principally Pecos River, Red Linear, and Red Monochrome. Of the three, Pecos River is comparable to the best known Paleolithic rock in the world, the caves of Lascaux in France.
I would have to return to the canyonlands— alas for my book’s time and travel budget! Not that the Rock Art Foundation charges more than a nominal sum for its tours. The individual tour to Meyers Spring, which lasted four hours, cost a mere 30 dollars. Everyone involved, including the guides, works for the foundation for free.
By December of 2014 I was back for another Rock Art Foundation tour, this one down into Eagle Nest Canyon in Langtry. Apart from rock shelters with their ancient and badly faded petrographs, cooking debris, tools, and even a mummy of a woman who—scientists have determined— died of chagas, Eagle Nest Canyon is the site of Bonfire Shelter, the earliest and the second biggest bison jump, after Canada’s Head Bashed-In, in North America. Some 10,000 years ago hunters drove hundreds of prehistoric bison—larger than today’s bison—over the cliff. And in 800 BC, hunters drove a herd of modern bison over the same cliff, so many animals that the decaying mass of unbutchered and partially butchered carcasses spontaneously combusted. In deeper layers dated to 14,000 years, archaeologists have found bones of camel, horse, and mammoth, among other megafauna of the Pleistocene.
DESCENT INTO EAGLE NEST CANYON, DECEMBER 2014
Then in the spring of this year I visited the Lewis Canyon site on the shore of the Pecos, with its mesmerizing petroglyphs of bear claws, atlatls, and stars, and, behind a morass of boulders, an agate mirror of a tinaja encircled by petrographs.
LEWIS CANYON PETROGLYPHS, MAY 2015
LEWIS CANYON TINAJA SITE WITH PETROGRAPHS, BY THE PECOS RIVER, MAY 2015
Not all but most of the Lower Pecos Canyonland rock art sites— and this includes Meyers Spring, Eagle Nest Canyon and Lewis Canyon— are on private property. Furthermore, visits to Meyers Spring, Lewis Canyon, and many other sites require a high clearance vehicle for a tire-whumping, paint-scraping, bone-jarring drive in. So I was beginning to appreciate the magnitude of the privilege it is to visit these sites. At Lewis Canyon, as I stood on the limestone shore of the sparkling Pecos in utter silence but for the crunch of the boots of my fellow tour members, I learned that less than 50 people a year venture to float down its length.
This October I once again traveled to the Lower Pecos, this time for the Rock Art Foundation’s annual three day Rock Art Rendezvous. Offered this year were the three sites I had already visited, plus a delectable menu that included White Shaman, Fate Bell, and—not for those prone to vertigo— Curly Tail Panther.
WHITE SHAMAN, OCTOBER 2015
Just off Highway 90 near its Pecos River crossing, the White Shaman Preserve serves as the headquarters for Rock Art Rendezvous. After a winding drive on dirt road, I parked near the shade structure. From there, the White Shaman rock art site was a brief but rugged hike down one side of cactus-studded canyon, then up the other. I was glad to have brought a hiking pole and leather gloves. No knee surgery on the horizon, either. When I arrived at White Shaman, named after the central luminous figure, the sun was low in the sky, bathing the shelter’s wall and its reddish drawings in gold and turning the Pecos, far below, where an occasional truck droned by, deep silver.
The next morning, at the Rock Art Foundation’s tour of the Shumla Archaeological and Research Center in nearby Comstock, I heard Dr. Carolyn Boyd’s stunning talk about her book, The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos, which is forthcoming in 2016 from University of Texas Press. Dr. Boyd, whose work is based on 25 years of archaeological research in the Lower Pecos and a meticulous study of Mexican anthropology, argues that White Shaman, which is many thousands of years old, may represent the oldest known creation story in North America.
FATE BELL, OCTOBER 2015
From the White Shaman Preserve, Fate Bell is a few minutes down highway 90 in Seminole Canyon State Park. More than any other site, this shelter in the cake-like layers of the limestone walls of a canyon, reminded me of the cave art I had seen in Baja California’s Sierra de San Francisco. Inhabited on and off for some 9,000 years, Fate Bell is the largest site in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. It has various styles of petrograph, including a spectacular group of anthropomorphs with what appear to be antlers and wings.
CURLY TAIL PANTHER, OCTOBER 2015
Curly Tail Panther is a scoop of a cave about the size of a walk-in closet, but as if for Superman to whoosh in, set dizzyingly high on a cliff-side overlooking the Devils River. The back wall has an array of petrographs: red mountain lion, anthropomorphic figures, and geometric designs. The only access to Curly Tail Panther is by way of a narrow ledge. Drop your hiking pole or your sunglasses from here, and you won’t see them again. You might lose a character, too—in the opening of Mary Black’s novel, Peyote Fire, a shaman stumbles to his death from this very ledge. The Rock Art Foundation’s website made it clear, Curly Tail Panther is not for anyone who has a fear of heights. But who doesn’t? My strategy was to take a deep breath and, like the running shoes ad says, Just do it.
This finds me deep into drafting an essay, or rather a biographical sketch of a most fascinating Texas oral historian… More news about that soon. Meanwhile, from the archives, recently migrated from the old blog platform to self-hosted WordPress here at www.madam-mayo.com:
Mexico has been very much on my mind these past days because I have been working on some translations of works by Mexican writers Agustín Cadena and Rose Mary Salum... more news about those soon… and also (not entirely a digression from the book in-progress about Far West Texas) I have been working on an essay about books in Mexico entitled “Dispatch from the Sister Republic.” >> CONTINUE READING
Nope, that is not Francisco I. Madero, pictured right, but J.J. Kilpatrick, subject of Lonn Taylor’s fascinating article in this same issue of the Journal of Big Bend Studies, vol. 29, 2017.
For those rusty on their borderlands and Mexican history, Francisco I. Madero was the leader of Mexico’s 1910 revolution– the first major revolution of the 20th century– and President of Mexico from 1911-1913. This was not only a transformative episode for Mexico, but also for Texas.
My book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, came out in 2014 (also in Spanish, translated by Agustín Cadena as Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, Manual espírita, from Literal Publishing.) So far so good: it has been cited already in a number of scholarly works about Madero and the Revolution.
Yes indeed, Metaphysical Odyssey is a peculiar title. In the article, I explain why I chose it and why, much as readers groan about it, I would not change it.
> Read the paper here. (I had posted an earlier only partially edited PDF at this link; in case you’ve already seen it, as of today, June 17, 2019, it has been updated.) And you can order a copy of the actual printed article with all photos, and of the complete issue from the Center for Big Bend Studies here.
A few of the photos, not in the PDF:
The first and definitively not secret book. This shows my copy of a third edition of the book that launched the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero’s La sucesión presidencial en 1910 [The Presidential Succession in 1910]. This third edition is from 1911. The first edition is dated 1908 and went into circulation in early 1909. Photo: C.M. Mayo.Advertisement in Helios, October 1911, for the just-published Manual espírita by Bhîma, that is, Francisco I. Madero. Photo: C.M. Mayo.The title page of my copy of a first edition of Madero’s Manual espírita of 1911. Note that it is stamped “Cortesia del Gral. Ramón F. Iturbe [Courtesy of General Ramón F. Iturbe]. Photo: C.M. Mayo.Frontispiece and title page of my copy of the 1906 Spanish translation of Léon Denis’ Aprés le mort, translated from the French by Ignacio Mariscal and sponsored by Francisco Madero and his son, Francisco I. Madero. Photograph by C.M. Mayo.My copy of the cover of the rare circa 1924 Barcelona edition of Manual espírita. Photo by C.M. Mayo.
#
SPECIAL NOTE
Undoubtedly scholars, novelists and screenwriters will be producing works about Francisco I. Madero and the Mexican Revolution until Kingdom Come (or, perhaps I should say, the Reemergence of Atlantis); because I am a literary writer who roams over a wide variety of subjects, I do not intend to keep up with them all. That said, I regret that I could not cite in my article the book by Mexican historian Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, Dos Revolucionarios a la sombra de Madero: A historia de Solón Argüello Escobar y Rogelio Fernández Güell(Mexico: Ariel, 2016), which I recommend as crucial for any bibliography on Madero, his Spiritism, the history of metaphysical religion in Mexico, and the Mexican Revolution itself. Gutíerrez Müller’s work should also be of special interest for anyone interested in current Mexican politics, for the prologue is by the author’s husband, now president of Mexico, Andrés López Obrador. This video on his YouTube channel shows the president and first lady discussing her book.
Of late I have become an enthusiast of typewriting— the machine I am working on these days is a refurbished Swiss-made 1967 Hermes 3000, and quite the workhorse it is! (Ribbons? Kein Problem.) Of course I do most of my writing on my computer using Microsoft Word; WordPress for this blog; not to mention multitudinous hours spent with ye olde email program. But for laser-level attentional focus–and percussive energy!– the typewriter is something special, and as time goes by, the more I use it, the more I appreciate it. In fact, I now use my typewriter for one thing or another (drafts, notes, letters, recipe cards) almost every day.
Though I have yet to meet him in person, my mentor in the Typosphere is none other than Richard Polt, professor of philosophy at Xavier University and the author of some heavy-weight tomes on Heidegger, and, to the point, a practical manual I often consult, and warmly recommend to anyone thinking of buying a typewriter, or, say, hauling Grandpa’s out of some cobwebbed corner of the garage: The Typewriter Revolution. As “Richard P.” Professor Polt also maintains a blog of the same name. And now he, Frederic S. Durbin, and Andrew V. McFeaters, have put together a pair of anthologies, both just published, the second of which, Escapements: Typewritten Tales from Post-Digital Worlds (Loose Dog Press, 2019), includes a story of mine: “What Happened to the Dog?”
Herewith, “What Happened to the Dog?” (Caveat: undoubtedly the photographs in the book itself are of better quality; these I just snapped with my smartphone, too quickly, I daresay, in a rush to make the PO with the originals.) May this entice you to buy the ridiculously low-priced anthology of a cornucopia of wildy-imagined stories by many other writers, now available at amazon.com— and better yet, have a go at typing your own pre-/post-digital fiction.
My writing assistant answers the title question: She was having a perfectly reasonable morning siesta when, suddenly, this book appeared on her back. She reports that this reminded her, mistily, of a previous life as a dimetrodon.
Those of you who follow this blog may be wondering, what perchance, and by jumpingjacks, does this short story about a typewriter have to do, and by the way what has happened with, the book in-progress on Far West Texas? The question of technology has turned out to be central to what I am writing about Far West Texas. (Darkly: there will be Heidegger quotes.)
Fingers crossed that I can finally get the next Marfa Mondays podcast up Monday after next.
Next Monday, the second of the month, I post here for the writing workshop. More anon.
A most wonderful rare book about a 17th century American poet, whom I aim to write about, has arrived in my library. But phew, it STINKS. It stinks so nasty, I cannot even bear to read half a page of it.
Here’s what a used books expert says about smelly books:
But ayy, this book I have is another level of stinky. Think musty, as in New Orleans graveyard. Googling around, I find that baking soda, strong sunlight, and kitty litter are some possible remedies. I will try the kitty litter, and report. Meanwhile, any suggestions would be most welcome.
#
Migrating this blog, or rather, migrating selected link-updated posts from its old blogger platform to self-hosted WordPress here at www.madam-mayo.com has been a bit of a job, ongoing since January of this year 2019. So this Monday I’m taking a break, reposting a recently migrated piece, a readers’ favorite of this blog’s many Mexico-related posts.
What the Muse Sent Me about the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by C.M. Mayo First published at Madam Mayo blog March 20, 2017
Door to the quarters of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “the Tenth Muse.” Photo by C.M. Mayo, 2017.
Late last year my amiga the brilliant short story writer Paula Whyman invited me to send a “Dispatch from Mexico City” for her new magazine, Scoundrel Time. So I dialed in to Muse HQ…
As I told Paula, woefully past the deadline, I had asked the Muse for a slider, a yummy little note about books in Mexico, but she delivered the whole ox. In other words, my “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla”is a novela-length essay about the Mexican literary landscape, from prehispanic codices to contemporary writers. It is what it is, I don’t want start chopping (there would be blood!!), but of course, a 30 page essay is too long for a magazine.
Scoundrel Time will be publishing an excerpt about Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación-– a nearly 500 year-old memoir little known outside of Mexico and Texas, yet that stands as one of the most astonishing and important books ever written. (As soon that goes on-line, I will be sure to link to it from here. Read the piece about Cabeza de Vaca in Scoundrel Time here.)
For rare book collectors, Mecca is Mexico City’s Colonia Centro, and for such aficionados of mexicana as myself, its sanctum sanctorum, the Librería Madero—by the way, recently relocated from the Avenida Madero to the Avenida Isabela La Católica, facing the the formidable wedding cake-white corner of the 16th century ex-convent of San Jerónimo, known today as the Claustro de Sor Juana, that is, the Convent of Sister Juana.
And if you would not know Sor Juana from a poinsettia, gentle reader, with all respect, you must crowbar out that boulder of ignorance, for which you will be rewarded by a glimpse of the diamond of the Mexico’s Baroque period, the first great Latin American poet and playwright, “the Tenth Muse,” a cloistered nun.
Texan poet John Campion was the first to translate Sor Juana’s magnum opus, “Primero sueño,” as “The Dream,” in 1983. (Alas, that date is not a typo.) Campion’s translation is out of print, but he offers a free PDF download of the text on his website, worldatuningfork.com. The first lines of Campion’s translation beautifully capture Sor Juana’s uncanny power:
Pyramidal death-born shadow of earth aimed at heaven a proud point of vain obelisks pretending to scale the Stars
In her time Sor Juana was one of the most learned individuals, man or woman, in the New World, and her prodigious oeuvre, from love poems to polemics, comedies to enigmas to plays to villancicos, was exceptionally sophisticated, so much so that its interpretation is today the province of a small army of sorjuanistas. As Mexico’s Nobel laureate poet Octavio Paz writes in Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden), “A work survives its readers; after a hundred or two hundred years it is read by new readers who impose on it new modes of reading and interpretation. The work survives because of these interpretations, which are in fact resurrections.”
And perchance startling discoveries. In his 2011 El eclipse del Sueño de Sor Juana, Américo Larralde Rangel makes a radiant case that her “Primero Sueño” describes the dawn over Mexico City after a lunar eclipse on the solstice of the winter of 1684.
In the Librería Madero I find on the first shelf, facing out, two new books by sorjuanistas: one about Sor Juana’s family, another, just published by a Legionario de Cristo, that purports to decipher her twenty enigmas. The latter work incorporates a series of contemporary paintings of Sor Juana in the baroque style—dim backgrounds, crowns and scepters of flowers, and afloat above her head, fat-tummied cherubs, flounces, unspooling bundles of draperies. But these Sor Juanas look too pert, make too coy a tilt of the head. It seems to me as if, session over, the model might have just tossed off that habit to wriggle into some yoga wear.
Yes, just as in the United States, in Mexican cities yoga studios have been popping up like honguitos.
But if a vision of modern Mexico would have been obscure to Sor Juana, by no means is Sor Juana obscure in modern Mexico. She has inspired scores of poets and musicians; there have been movies, documentaries, and novels, most recently, Mónica Lavin’s 2009 best-seller Yo, la peor (I, the Worst—yet to be translated into English—fingers crossed that Patricia Dubrava will do it).
As I write this in 2017, Sor Juana graces the celadon-green 200 peso bill. From the portrait by Miguel Cabrera in the Museo Nacional de Historia: a serenely intelligent young woman’s face framed in a wimple, and behind her, her quills and inkpot and an open book of her poetry—and a few lines:
Hombres necios que acusáis a la mujer sin razón, sin ver que sois la ocasión de lo mismo que culpáis.
I cannot pretend to render the music of Sor Juana’s lines into English. But here’s a rough go at their literal meaning: You pig-headed men who accuse women unjustly, blind to the fact that you are the cause for that which you cast blame.
UPDATE: “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla,” my long essay on the Mexican literary landscape and the power of the book, is now available in Kindle.
#
P.S. You will find more Mexico-related posts on this blog’s Mexico page. As you will see, there are a few posts that have been migrated, and many more to go– and more as yet unlisted. Plus, ayyy, there is the whole Maximilian – Carlota blog (History of Mexico’s Second Empire / French Intervention) to do…. It will happen.
My favorite rare book historian Michael F. Suarez, SJ gives this excellent talk for TEDxCharlotteville:
#
AND FROM THE MADAM MAYO ARCHIVES…
Poco a poco (bit by bit), since January of this year I have been migrating selected and updated posts from Madam Mayo’s original Google Blogger platform to self-hosted WordPress here at www.madam-mayo.com. Madam Mayo goes all the way back to the Cambrianesquely Blogasonic Explosion, I mean, um, 2006… This past week I’ve worked a bit on the translation posts, among them:
TRANSLATING ACROSS THE BORDER Originally posted October 29, 2015 Edited Transcript of a Talk by C.M. Mayo at the annual conference of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)
Muchísimas gracias, Mark Weiss, and thank you also to my fellow panelists, it is an honor to sit on this dias with you. Thank you all for coming. It is especially apt to be talking about translating Mexican writing here, a jog from the Mexican border, in Tucson—or Tuk-son as the Mexicans pronounce it.
I grew up in Northern California and was educated in various places but mainly the University of Chicago. As far as Mexico went, until I was in my mid-twenties, I had absorbed, to use historian John Tutino’s term, the “enduring presumptions.” Translation: I had zero interest in Mexico.
You know that old saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans?
