Ghost Ranch by Lesley Poling-Kempes (review)

b o o k R e v ie w s Qhost Ranch. By Lesley Poling-Kempes. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005. 291 pages, $45.00/$22.95. Reviewed by Rod Streng Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro Lesley Poling-Kempes’s history of northern New Mexico’s renowned Ghost Ranch also reveals her personal sense of awe that grows out of a childhood memory when she first visited the region on a family vacation. The strong imagery she employs to describe the “rugged, dramatic, oversized qualities” (5) of what she identifies as a spiritual “high place” characterized by “landscapes of paradox: universal and personal, dangerous and comforting, temporal and transcendent” enlivens what could be otherwise another dry chronicle (4). In her introduction, Poling-Kempes briefly acknowledges two Native American myths associated with the mountain Cerro Pedemal that presides over the twenty-two-thousand-acre Ghost Ranch located in the Piedra Lumbre basin on the high desert of New Mexico. But having already recorded in Valley of Shining Stone (1997) the history of the Abiquiu region and its native inhabitants, in Ghost Ranch she focuses on the more recent Anglo history of the ranch. Poling-Kempes records how Ghost Ranch, a turn-of-the-century dude ranch for such wealthy and privileged families as the Rockefellers and the Johnsons of Johnson & Johnson was propelled toward international recognition by the dis­ tinct landscape painting of artist Georgia O ’Keeffe. O ’Keeffe’spaintings portray the region’sdramatic geographical features and capture its spiritual energy, and her personal life established an example of a lifestyle still followed by artists of dynamic creativity inspired by the desert’s powerful presence. Other people of note such as Boston Brahmin Carol Bishop Stanley and paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert, as well as later guests such as Los Alamos physicist Robert Oppenheimer and more recent movie stars, have all contributed to the unique character of Ghost Ranch. Poling-Kempes attempts to “flesh out”the characters and events introduced in Valley of Shining Stone with personal memories of Robert Wood Johnson, excerpts from letters of O ’Keeffe and others, as well as an abundance of pho­ tographs of historical and personal value from a variety of sources that include the Amon Carter Museum and the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust (xii). In Ghost Ranch, Poling-Kempes has expanded the biography of colorful “living legend” and “expert horseman and cowboy” Juan de Dios with his daughter’s assistance (49). Family histories evolve into institutional history after the Pack family bequeathed the ranch to the Presbyterian Church in 1955, when Ghost Ranch became a spiritual home “within reach of the common folks” (4). Poling-Kempes traces the evolution of this celebrated retreat of “painted sands” and “juniper foothills” (105) from its inception as the Ranch of the Witches, where legendary outlaws hid themselves and their loot, to the con­ ference center nestled among “mesas falling away to the far horizon” that W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L i t e r a t u r e S p r in g 2 0 0 7 has become the inspiration for artistic and spiritual pilgrimages (255). Ghost Ranch eventually became an “almost otherworldly home” occupying a liminal locale that links a “mythic sense to the physical” with “a tangible sense to the transcendent” (6, 5, 5). Poling-Kempes’s worship inspires readers to make the pilgrimage, either via the text or some other form of transportation. These Trespasses. By Jim Reese. Omaha, NE: Backwaters Press, 2005. 74 pages, $16.00. Reviewed by Susan Naramore Maher University of Nebraska, Omaha A literary renaissance across the Great Plains, bolstered by distinctive regional presses, ambitious creative writing programs, well-attended city- and statewide literary festivals, and receptive fans, makes this part of the American West par­ ticularly vital right now for American letters. Additionally, Ted Kooser’s twoyear appointment as US poet laureate has helped gamer national attention to the plains and its poetic traditions. Among the new voices poised to make a significant contribution to this region’s literary culture is poet Jim Reese. In his new collection, These Trespasses, Reese trains his attentive, discerning eyes...