ABSTRACT
The Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico is a poetic engagement with the State of New Mexico’s history and continuing participation in the research and development of nuclear weapons and devices, along with the mining of uranium, and attempts at sequestering nuclear waste that will be highly toxic for thousands of years. The poems were developed along the lines of the Jungian pursuit of mythologies, from Ancient Greece to the Pueblos of Northern New Mexico, from the Near East to the Far East, along with scientific, political and economic inquiries. Although grounded in New Mexico, the work considers repercussions the Atomic Bomb had on Japan, along with the accidental contamination of places in the United States and elsewhere. Archetypal symbols include Hekate, Apollo, Kali and the Eagle sacred to Native American traditions. Showing how extreme violence both energizes and degrades language and meaning, this Jungian arts-based research offers a language to re-member a human psyche that’s become fatally split by the modernist fetish of subject/object division. In addition, each of the forty poems faces a paratext that carries the weight of their references and general information.
