J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

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Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Trinidad, Colorado; David Mason & the Ludlow Massacre.

Where is everybody? That is the question you ask yourself, wandering the more or less abandoned streets of Trinidad, Colorado on a cool, hazy April morning. It's as though the Martians have landed and taken everybody away: it is America without Americans. Should you venture outward to the sprawl, there's some activity at the truck-stops strung along the frontage roads to I-25, and the usual array of junk food parlors, auto parts stores, big boxes, etc. But the only action I caught in downtown Trinidad was around the multiple stores selling weed, legal in Colorado. Trinidad is close to the New Mexico line. The town is marketing itself as a dope destination for Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Trinidad was a mining town. Heavily Italian, back in the day. David Mason, former poet laureate of Colorado, is the writer to read in this part of the world. His powerful novel-in-verse Ludlow tells the stories of the Greek, Italian and Scots immigrant miners of southern Colorado, and the miners' strike in 1913-14 that culminated in the Ludlow Massacre.
What remains is this built town, which is wonderful, and proud, and lost. The built town speaks of a civitas no longer extant: it is a challenge to even think of yourself as a citizen in the strip malls that are the standard North American West landscape of loneliness and unease.






































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