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 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’ “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,” or “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 “litany: blood in the soil/texas (an excerpt)” by Sharon Bridforth, “Our Texas Economy” by Chuck Taylor, among others.
