In Trees Dream of Water Leo Romero offers up ancestral history and personal journeys through the landscapes of northern New Mexico. The poetry weaves together a lyrical exploration of identity, memory, and the natural world, inviting readers on a captivating journey of self-discovery that spans Romero's career.
“The poems in this collection began as a search for a history of my ancestors in a small, isolated valley in northern New Mexico. But no one wrote it down, and I was left to construct a poetic history where there were no written records . . .”
Leo Romero stands as a foundational figure in Latino letters. With six books of poetry and a book of short fiction to his name, Romero’s contribution to the literary canon is profound and enduring. Bringing together for the first time his new and selected poems, Trees Dream of Water reflects Romero’s journey from youth to maturity as a person and a poet, and his deep connection to New Mexico and its culture. Traversed by memory, myth, and observation of the natural world, these poems explore family, community belonging and conflict, life as an artist, and the cycles of life and death. This lyrical anthology includes accompanying essays to illuminate Romero’s life and work for longtime admirers and new readers alike.
“Now, here we are, with a classic collection, by one of the most important poets of his time and place. Stop and listen to the remembered dream of a generation, a life, the edge of a flowering desert in time.”—Joy Harjo, from the foreword
“Leo Romero—a poet of short line, scenes of daily life, sun, mountain, tree, and moon in northern New Mexico—stands singular. Dreams come to life when you listen to the roots, notice leaves, seeds, and the movement of all beings, things, underground and above. A most valuable text, illuminating and embracing moments rarely spoken or revealed.”—Juan Felipe Herrera, emeritus poet laureate of the United States and author of Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems
“Poetry is ageless because of time. Memory is back when, and today is now. Time is both past and present. Decades ago are decades later. Time is still ageless, more or less. I met Leo in the late 1960s. . . . And I vividly remember telling myself: this young Chicano guy Romero is a poet and a soothsayer. Watch out. And he was and is.”—Simon J. Ortiz, author of Light As Light
“A luminous journey across a life of poetry, Leo Romero offers a profound work full of life, communion, and connection to land and community.”—Santiago Vaquera-VÁsquez, author of Nocturno de frontera
“Trees Dream of Water is a captivating ride through memory, identity, and life in northern New Mexico. Leo Romero’s mastery of language and deep connection to his heritage shines through in every poem. The poems are deeply personal and universally resonant. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of culture, nature, and the art of poetry. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand loss and the search for belonging.”—Ruben Quesada, author of Brutal Companion
“Deeply rooted in New Mexico, Leo Romero’s poems are honed to simplicity and transform situations and narratives into myth. Following no trend but staying true to his inner compass, Leo Romero has created a poetry that is humble, moving, and thrilling to the core.”—Arthur Sze, author of The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems
“Listening to Leo Romero’s story-anecdote-half-whispered poems can be like breaking into an old-fashioned rural phone party line and catching soulful fragments pulled from the deepest melancholy of this haggard region. Impeccably modest, conversationally incomplete, painfully personal, sometimes his unpretentious glimpses of family, friends, the intimacies of mountain hamlet life, carry an authenticity I have never experienced in words before. Born of an almost forgotten northern New Mexican experience, they are akin to magic, they are how Chicano history might actually sound were it allowed to speak for itself. Leo Romero is the region’s living treasure.”—Peter Nabokov, author of Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places
“In this moving retrospective, Romero’s poems take us into the rural Southwest—its people, flora and fauna, indelible landscapes. Whether the perspective is from the poet-self or a persona, the journey is deep and lonesome, forged by history and ancestry, reflected in the ‘the throbbing / of the mountains / The slow breathing of trees . . . the uneasiness / of the fields.’”—Valerie MartÍnez, author of Count
Born in 1950 in ChacÓn, New Mexico, Leo Romero is considered a foundational figure of Latino letters. Since 1988, Romero has been a bookseller in Santa Fe, New Mexico, having had five different bookstores in five different locations. His current bookstore is Books of Interest. Romero has published six books of poetry and one book of short fiction, and he has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, was a Pushcart Prize winner, and a Helene Wurlitzer Foundation resident.
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