Selected for the 2009 National Poetry Series by Natasha Trethewey
Set in southern New Mexico, where her family's multicultural history is
deeply rooted, the poems in Carrie Fountain's first collection explore
issues of progress, history, violence, sexuality, and the self. Burn
Lake weaves together the experience of life in the rapidly changing
American Southwest with the peculiar journey of Don Juan de Oñate, who
was dispatched from Mexico City in the late sixteenth- century by
Spanish royalty to settle the so-called New Mexico Province, of which
little was known. A letter that was sent to Oñate by the Viceroy of New
Spain, asking that should he come upon the North Sea in New Mexico, he
should give a detailed report of the configuration of the coast and the
capacity of each harbor becomes the inspiration for many of the poems in
this artfully composed debut.