2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

the art form.
Fray Angelico was born in Wagon Mound, New Mexico in 1910.
He lived to be 86 years of age. He began writing poetry at fifteen, while
attending seminary school in the Midwest. Always the precocious student,
he learned to read and write in both English and Spanish by the
age of five. While a young boy in school, deeply impressed by the lyrical
poetic styles of Donne, Tennyson, and Robert Lewis Stevenson, he decided
he wanted to write poetry like that and began what he called
Cantares, in 1925. He later would recall he had also been influenced by
his love of Spanish odes and musical verses sung by performers in medieval
Spain where celebrations included jugglers and entertainers. The
book of verse was dedicated to his parents, with no intention of publishing
it. It was only later that his brother Tom Chavez encouraged him
into publishing under the name of Cantares: Canticles & Poems. The
poems show a discipline for the art and a grasp of descriptive imagery
quite beyond his fifteen years.
His name was given to him by a rector who had been impressed by
the mural paintings he produced in Cincinnati. The rector dubbed him
Fray Angelico after a famous painter and Florentine artist, Giovanni da
Fiesole who lived in Spain in 1387. When he took his vows that was
the name he chose to be called by. Unfortunately, the murals were destroyed
by some well-meaning but misguided priests upgrading the cathedral
where they were lodged. Tom Chavez comments that his brother
was embittered and saddened to see them destroyed. He felt it was his
best creative work. His poetry, fortunately was preserved, a selected
works was his last book personally selected by Fray for his friends and his
admirers of his verses.
Joan Logghe was recently named Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, came
to New Mexico from Pennsylvania. I met this warm, seriously funny
person when I was working on my creative writing certificate. Our
class was small, around 13 or 14 people, a definite benefit to all of us,
giving more chances to read aloud from stuff. Joan introduced us to
several major poets: Lorca, Bly, Gilbert, Neruda, Sagan, and Greenbaum,
to name a few. She called herself the handout queen. Occasionally
she read aloud from her own works, sometimes writing something
new along with us.
Santa Fe Literary Review 139