My husband’s grandfather was known for saying, “And a grand time was had by all.”  How did he have the authority to include all in his statement?

The organizers of last Saturday’s “For Love of Lit” reading, held at the Branigan Cultural Center in Las Cruces, won’t presume to speak for everyone, but we thought it was an excellent session, with both familiar and fresh voices, and a great variety of writing.

Joe Somoza

Joe Somoza’s poems from his back yard were balanced by Dick Thomas’s poems about his deck.

Frank Varela

Frank Varela declared that his current work is too depressing, so he read from Bitter Coffee, his volume of poems about being Puerto Rican in Chicago.

Two readers new to this venue, Christine Eber and Sarah Nolan, brought fresh border crossing focus in the languages of their work.

Dick Thomas

Sam Muir read powerfully from the poems of her husband John about his experience in Vietnam and its aftermath.

And so it went.  Several of the readers at this event will also be part of a reading hosted by Tres Amigas in honor of Women’s History Month toward the end of March.  More on that when the time comes.

Sam Muir