Range of Light: Poems

by Catharine Savage Brosman

In Range of Light, Catharine Savage Brosman offers lyrical and narrative poems about the American West and Southwest, from Wyoming to New Mexico to California. She explores three different types of ranges―mountains, grazing ranges, and the scope and spectrum of light, a constant motif. Employing a variety of verse forms, she evokes the landscapes, animals, folk art, prehistoric peoples, and historical figures of this captivating area. Scenes and objects are not inert, but humanized by the action of past figures or by observers, seeing the West, modifying it through their presence and being modified in “Green emotion binds / the muscled landscape to our gaze.” The region as a whole, with its tremendous differences and varied history, but shared identity, comes alive under Brosman’s touch―to be experienced and admired.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[Sophia Nuñez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Away at school in New Jersey, I came across this volume in the public library and, upon noting that Brosman is from Colorado and writes about the West and Southwest, I checked it out in hopes of being transported home, at least by reading. Brosman did not disappoint: although her diction was more complex and polysyllabic than I was expecting, all those consonants capture finely the rugged rockiness of the region. Of the nature poems, I am particularly fond of "Indian Paintbrush." "Fremont in California" stands out for me among the historical poems, blending his story with references to Achilles, Hector, and Andromache, endowing the events with an epic dimension. I personally feel somewhat conflicted regarding these histories, however, so I am grateful for Brosman's words in the final stanza of "Fremont in California": "those heroics, if they were, / are done, no Homer to relate them now."

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant image maker, lyrical wordsmith. Favorite poems include “Snow in Taos,” “Prickly Pear,” “At Los Gallos,” “Weavings,” “Great Pine,” “Sage,” “Dust Devil,” “Plums,” and the gorgeous “Sunset, with Red Rain.”

[Kathy Duffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poems that evoke place -- the west, the desert, the mountains. If you have ever traveled in that part of the country you will be able to retrieve some of the feeling, the vistas, the atmosphere of the west.

[Shaun · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a transplant to the Southwest, I enjoyed Catharine Savage Brosman's "Range of Light" - at least for the most part. Where these poems excel is in capturing the sense experience of the arid West, especially the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave and Sonoran deserts in all their austere beauty and often-overlooked abundance. From a technical standpoint, though, Brosman's poetry was sometimes too florid, deferring to adjectives and adverbs over good strong verbs. These instances jarred me from the scene because they felt too much like "writing," the words calling attention to themselves. However, what was most jarring was the seeming revisionism in the "historical" poems. In one poem she makes casual use of "braves" to refer to Native Americans. In another, she overlooks the complex, place-based solutions developed by the Anasazi (i.e. ancestral Pueblo) to fit their desert home and instead imagines them suffering in the elements and barely surviving. In still another poem, she posits an abolitionist motivation to the Union Army in New Mexico in the 1860s, ignoring many of the political complexities during the Civil War era: federalism, interstate commerce and shifting economics, colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and racist policies intended to drive Euro-American settlers west and remove indigenous and Mexican/Spanish inhabitants from the land. In noticing that all of her historical personas are white male settlers and "explorers," it strikes an even deeper colonialist tone when Brosman suddenly states, "But the druid spirits weep / I think," in a poem about bristlecone pines, an iconic tree of the Southwest (and not the oak venerated by the actual Druids, it should be noted). Why not refer to the original spirits of this land, of Turtle Island? Where are the indigenous voices? The voices of Mexicans and Spanish descendants, of historical women in the West? If Brosman had brought the same careful attention to these important social details of the Southwest as she does to its landscape, then I would call "Range of Light" a fine book. Instead it reads like a Moran painting: beautiful in its imagery, propagandist in its impact.