Victoria Edwards Tester speaks as a woman who knows what it feels like to be censored and who defiantly resists self-censorship. Tester's poems listen to the past and to creatures, land, and ghosts who most people can't hear at all. Her poems are rooted in New Mexico history but they transcend regional boundaries. She uses metaphor to reconcile what rationally doesn't appear to belong together. Her work is an attentive intermingling of imagination and intuition, weaving together landscape, choice, accident, love, and tragedy.
"It was after I saw the saints behind their iron grilles
and even the children weaving their tiny crosses
torn from the laughter of winter
jasmine into the saints' cages,
that I decided to leave my prison of grief.
When I opened my mouth an exquisite white spider
crawled into the world on her eight legs."
from "Chimayo"
