Some Early Reflections on Voices from a Poetry Editor

I was new to New Mexico when Charles Little asked me to become part of a small group of writers launching Voices From the American Land. The project was Charles’s legacy. And it was his good-bye to all the beauty that had marked him early, sustained him, taught him to fight on behalf of the wild fields, forests and rivers. Charles was a passionate doer. He wanted chapbooks that sang of America’s variegated topographies. He refused the commercial ambitions of the poetry world’s insistence on books of poems by poetry stars. No, he wanted small, accessible chapbooks of poems in the populist style of Walt Whitman. He wanted poems of the land’s beauty to belong to the people not just to the rarified poetry world. About this he was intense…I do mean intense. But, like Barry Lopez, he was also a romantic. It is fitting and poignant that Charles’s vision is honored by another defender of land and its creatures.

Can such ventures survive the market’s singular demand—profit? Perhaps not. Charles would say, with Howard Zinn, history records the defeat of the poor, and in these times, America’s open land—but Zinn’s research revealed that, “from time to time, the people win.” And if Charles and Barry’s intuition is accurate, the same can be said for the people’s land. It is our hope, in the spirit of the first peoples’ of this land, that such a vision continues.

—Renny Golden

Since its inception in 2008, Voices from the American Land has been privileged to publish ten chapbooks by ten extraordinary poets. We offer, now, an online essay, “Uncivilized,” by Barry Lopez (January 6, 1945 – December 25, 2020).

It's impossible to acknowledge all the people who have contributed to this effort, but we are grateful to each one. To the poets, the artists, the members; to everyone who has helped print and assemble and mail the chapbooks or organize or attend an event; to past board, staff, and advisors; to donors, large and small; to the foundations that have seen value in the work—this could not have happened without you.

We honor the memory of Charles Little, whose vision Voices realized.

This website will remain active until September 2021, and we will be happy to fulfill requests for any chapbooks still in print until that time.

Thank you all for the love you hold and the steps you take to protect your beloved landscapes and this Earth, our precious home.