Designed to enhance high school students' appreciation of the rich
variety of Texas poetry, A Students' Treasury of Texas Poetry
contains poems from the earliest beginnings of Texas, including
work by Sam Houston and Mirabeau B. Lamar, to the work of
contemporary poets like Naomi Shihab Nye, Larry McMurtry,
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Jas. Mardis, and Carmen Tafolla.
Hill groups the poems in categories, setting out the history of
Texas from pre-history in poems like Larry D. Thomas's "Caddoan
Indian Mound" or Alan Birkelbach's "Coronado Points," to a
chronicle of Texas counties in such poems as "Haiku: Hands
shading my eyes," by Michael Moore, or "The Poet Gets Drowsy
on the Road," by Frederick Turner. Texas poets examine the variety
of family life in poems such as Red Steagall's "The Memories in
Grandmother's Trunk," "Mi Tía Sofía," by Carmen Tafolla, or
"Growing Up near Escondido Canyon," by Walt McDonald.
Even the weather and Texas' varied creatures are fodder for the
poet's speculation, and Hill includes "Good-bye Summer," by Jas.
Mardis, and "Summer Begins Outside Dalhart, Texas," by Mary
Vanek, as well as "Mr. Bloomer's Birds," by William D. Barney,
and "A Mockingbird," by Boyce House.
The final chapter features attempts by poets to define the
mysterious state that is Texas and includes, among others, "litany:
blood in the soil/texas (an excerpt)," by Sharon Bridforth, and
"Our Texas Economy," by Chuck Taylor.
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BILLY HILL is a graduate of Southern Methodist University with
an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. Hill has
taught at several area colleges and universities and is responsible
for several excellent short fiction anthologies and a number of other
books by Texas writers. In 2002 he published Texas in Poetry 2
with TCU Press.
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