Mercury Poetry: Central and San Mateo
A group of
strangers waits
for the bus, all
looking down the
street at the same
moment for
something that
will carry them
into the future,
and one of them
takes his shirt
off, as if to say:
this is my city
Comedy and tragedy on the Duke City stage
The continuing vitality of Albuquerque theater is a kind of marvel. The economy is tanking. More people are moving out than moving in. Unemployment is again rising toward 8 percent in a double-dip recession. Nearly every creative effort—including classical music, art galleries, book stores, magazines, newspapers, book publishing and writing— is in a world of hurt.
We still support, however, nearly 50 theatrical companies staging an extraordinary variety of classical and contemporary, edgy and conventional shows every weekend, year round, in and out of tourist seasons. To perceive just how remarkable the Albuquerque scene is just look around you. Santa Fe, celebrated for the visual arts, has almost no theatrical presence...
Five Questions with New Mexico Authors – Malcolm Ebright, Rick Hendricks, and Richard W. Hughes
This week we ask historians and attorneys Malcolm Ebright, Rick Hendricks, and Richard W. Hughes some questions about their remarkably detailed and pioneering book Four Square Leagues: Pueblo Indian Land in New Mexico, which explores the intriguing and tangled history of the relationships between pueblos and Spanish, Mexican, and American governments over property rights to ancient tribal lands.
Max Linder & the Roots of Film Comedy
I love books about film. Motion pictures. In The Silent Clowns, Walter Kerr—a playwright and theater critic—explores the roots of comedy in Hollywood films. Of course the French were a little ahead of Hollywood, as Georges Méliès, an illusionist and filmmaker, who could be called a special effects master, sometimes called a “cinemagician,” seemed to already understand the medium thoroughly. One of his best-known films, A Trip to the Moon, was made in 1902...
Five Questions with New Mexico Authors – Debra Bloomfield
This week we ask photographer and author Debra Bloomfield some questions about her transcendent, exquisitely beautiful book of photographs, essays, and soundscapes entitled Wilderness published by UNM Press this year.
New Mexico Mercury: What’s so exciting about this book is the total experience it allows a reader to have with its remarkable conversion of visual, audial, and intellectual experience of wilderness. How did you conceive the possibility of achieving such a total experience?...
Mercury Poetry: Without Warning
At the bus stop and out of the corner of my eye
I see myself waiting,
awkward bundle at my feet.
I am wearing the same sky blue fleece
though it hangs looser against my body.
My hair, still long and full and brown,
frames the younger me in her oblivion...
Emerging Voices: Elizabeth Stebbins
Curator’s note by Stevie Olson: This week, the Mercury is proud to feature two pieces from Elizabeth Stebbins. Both pieces are thoughtfully-constructed, beautiful vignettes of life. Elizabeth’s grasp of language allows her execute poetic paragraphs which draw the reader into her observations and narratives. Liz is a wildly talented artist. As you’ll find out reading her pieces, she is a piano player, a budding philosopher, and gifted wordsmith. We wish Elizabeth a wonderful coming fall semester...
Dispatches from the 25th Annual National Poetry Slam
So, 20 years ago, Trinidad Sanchez Jr., Matthew John Conley, Jim Stewart, Bob Wilson, and Kenn Rodriguez all piled in a vehicle (Eric Bodwell's I believe) and made the trek to Ann Arbor for the National Poetry Slam (NPS). Since that time, ABQ has sent a team to NPS every year, and this year, 2014, marks the 20th time we will pile in a vehicle (rented now) and head out. This year, NPS is in Oakland and the tournament is much bigger than it was back then.
Albuquerque has a long, storied history with trips to NPS. From near fights in airports to national championships, from overnight drives to luxury flights, from personal vehicles to rental vehicles, from crashing on couches to staying in host hotels, ABQ makes it work from year to year. And this year is no different...
‘The unsolved murder capital of the world’
When Scot Key retired in 2008 after serving 12 years as district attorney, he said of Lincoln County, “In the decades prior, the county was ridiculed as the unsolved murder capital of the world.”
One of those unsolved murders was that of 16-year-old Katrina Chavez. She was a star at Hondo High School, a cheerleader, a volleyball player and a basketball player. The account of that unsolved and forgotten killing forms the most intense section of, The Enchantment of New Mexico, a new book by Dixie Boyle...
Emerging Voices: Anna Jenkins
Curator's note by Stevie Olson: This week we have an intriguing short story by Anna Jenkins. She uses Raymond Carver’s style in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” to construct her own version. I love her attention to detail throughout the piece and her use of dialogue to pull the reader into lunch-table conversation. Her pieces gives the reader a peek at what teenage girls may talk about when they talk about love. Anna, thank you for sharing your piece with us, and good luck in your final year of high school...