Lauren Camp

I moved to New Mexico decades ago on a whim, entranced by the high desert spaciousness and the fidelity of the light. I haven’t tired of what there is to see and learn here. This landscape teaches me patience and attention. My descriptions grow from a desire to do justice to my perceptions. How can I write it in a way that is true—and new? I like the task of looking and listening, the effort of receiving every detail as a challenge. 

Allen Ginsberg, in his Mind Writing Slogans, says, “Notice what you notice,” a statement I share frequently with my students. Truly, these are words to write by. No one has to see everything; we are individuals, and our attentions go where they go. In the natural world, and here in the high desert’s wide coat of light or immense dark, what I want to capture could be something slight. I love that I can enter a new day or a new page and experience something else, or the same thing in a new way. How will I describe it? Well, that’s the joy of this craft… that’s the way I deepen into my life. 

But “The Close of October” is doing more than noticing the present. It is concerned with the seasonal passage of time. I wrote the poem in 2014. If I were to write again about the end of October, my details would be other details of the natural world that feel important. What would arrest my attention might be the divots in my dirt road from numerous flash floods, the private moments of shadows across the back of the house, or the new table we’ve acquired for outdoor summer meals that will have to stand still and unused under winter’s glowing light.