This literary history focuses on five women writers of the American Southwest-Mary Austin, Willa Cather, Laura Adams Armer, Peggy Pond Church and Alice Marriott-whose prose and verse appeared from around 1900 through the 1980s. All of them came from or lived and worked in, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Together, they present a portrait of ""writing women"" and their responses to the Southwest. The book situates them in their time and place and examines their interactions with landscapes, people, art and history as they knew and depicted them. Their interest in fine arts and native arts and crafts is stressed, as well as their concern for the environment.

Mississippi has produced outstanding writers in numbers far out of proportion to its population. Their contributions to American literature, including poetry, rank as enormous. Mississippi Poets: A Literary Guide showcases forty-five poets associated with the state and assesses their work with the aim of appreciating it and its place in today's culture. In Mississippi, the importance of poetry can no longer be doubted. It partakes, as Faulkner wrote, of the broad aim of all literature: "to uplift man's heart." In Mississippi Poets, author Catharine Savage Brosman introduces readers to the poets themselves, stressing their versatility and diversity. It describes their subject matter and forms, their books, and particularly representative or striking poems. Of broad interest and easy to consult, this book is both a source of information and a showcase. It highlights the organic connection between poetry by Mississippians and the indigenous music genres of the region, blues and jazz. No other state has produced such abundant and impressive poetry connected to these essential American forms. Brosman profiles and assesses poets from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Grounds for selection include connections between the poets and the state; the excellence and abundance of their work; its critical reception; and both local and national standing. Natives of Mississippi and others who have resided here draw equal consideration. As C. Liegh McInnis observed, "You do not have to be born in Mississippi to be a Mississippi writer. . . . If what happens in Mississippi has an immediate and definite effect on your work, you are a Mississippi writer.

"Louisiana Creole Literature" is a broad-ranging critical reading of belles lettres--in both French and English--connected to and generally produced by the distinctive Louisiana Creole peoples, chiefly in the southeastern part of the state. The book covers primarily the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the flourishing period during which the term "Creole" had broad and contested cultural reference in Louisiana.

The study consists in part of literary history and biography. When available and appropriate, each discussion--arranged chronologically--provides pertinent personal information on authors, as well as publishing facts. Readers will find also summaries and evaluation of key texts, some virtually unknown, others of difficult access. Brosman illuminates the biographies and works of Kate Chopin, Lafcadio Hearn, George Washington Cable, Grace King, and Adolphe Duhart, among others. In addition, she challenges views that appear to be skewed regarding canon formation. The book places emphasis on poetry and fiction, reaching from early nineteenth-century writing through the twentieth century to selected works by poets still writing in the early twenty-first century. A few plays are treated also, especially by Victor Sejour. "Louisiana Creole Literature" examines at length the writings of important Francophone figures, and certain Anglophone novelists likewise receive extended treatment. Since much of nineteenth-century Louisiana literature was transnational, the book considers Creole-based works which appeared in Paris as well as those published locally."

Always spirited and elegant, by turns witty and meditative, Catharine Savage Brosman's Under the Pergola contemplates Louisiana, past and present, before traveling a broader path that crosses Colorado landscapes and the island of Sicily.

In her eighth collection of poems, Brosman evokes the Pelican State's trees, birds, rivers, swamps, bayous, New Orleans scenes, historic houses, and colorful characters. She also recounts, in free verse, formal verse, and one prose poem, the "misdeeds of Katrina" as she and others experienced them.

Other poems range widely, from reflections on writers Samuel Johnson, Paul Claudel, Andr? Malraux, and James Dickey to quiet meditations on the American West, Odysseus, fruits and vegetables, and the recent "light years" of the poet's life -- which she characterizes as "silken... slipping smoothly off" like a gown.

In Range of Light, Catharine Savage Brosman offers lyrical and narrative poems about the American West and Southwest, from Wyoming to New Mexico to California. She explores three different types of ranges-mountains, grazing ranges, and the scope and spectrum of light, a constant motif. Employing a variety of verse forms, she evokes the landscapes, animals, folk art, prehistoric peoples, and historical figures of this captivating area. Scenes and objects are not inert, but humanized by the action of past figures or by observers, seeing the West, modifying it through their presence and being modified in turn: Green emotion binds / the muscled landscape to our gaze. The region as a whole, with its tremendous differences and varied history, but shared identity, comes alive under Brosman's touch-to be experienced and admired. Catharine Savage Brosman's poetry collections include Places in Mind and The Muscled Truce, among others. A native of Colorado and a longtime resident of New Orleans, she is a professor emerita of French at Tulane University. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including La Nouvelle Revue Franaise, Europe (Paris), Critical Quarterly, and Sewanee Review.