Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1993
Abstract
Peggy Pond Church wrote one of the best-selling nonfiction books in University of New Mexico Press history, The House at Otowi Bridge (1959). Nevertheless, she was chiefly a poet. Critics of Southwestern and Western letters generally have praised her exceptional talents, citing not only her steady maturing ear, but her polished forms and regional voice. She published eight volumes of poetry during her life and was honored in 1984 with the New Mexico Governor's Award for Literature. Fifty years before, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant prophesied in The Saturday Review of Literature that here was “a pristine young poetess . . . probably the first real New Mexican to produce a book of undeniable poetic promise out of her region and her life” (34). Certainly two other awards—The Longmont, given for the outstanding merit of The House at Otowi Bridge, and the Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation prize for her humorous children's tale, The Burro of Angelitos—certified that a graceful stylist was at work in producing nonfiction as well. Church ranks first among writers published by the Rydal Press in the Writers’ Editions of the 1920s and 1930s, and her accomplishments as a poet began during a flowering of New Mexico arts and letters. Because of her poetic gift of language, when the New York Times Book Review asked playwright Lanford Wilson to tell its readers what were the best books of 1982, he instead lauded Otowi Bridge, which he had just discovered. Though Church is still regarded as a local or regional writer, her work has begun, deservedly, to attract a wider readership.
Recommended Citation
Armitage, Shelley. Peggy Pond Church. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1993. Digital. Western Writers Series, 108.