Author Interview: When a Poet Crosses the Desert

In 2012 and again in 2023, poet Kate Lassman traveled to the canyon lands of southern Utah and Colorado, her park ranger husband at her side.

Landscapes on which they trod included Rocky Mountain and Canyonlands National Parks, Colorado National Monument, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Arches National Parks, Natural Bridges National Monument, and Kodachrome Basin State Park. 

Both journeys took place around annular eclipses of the sun, in which the sun mostly disappears, its edge remining a bright ring around the intruding moon.

In these propitious places and moments, Kate Lassman found inspiration for the poems now assembled in her newly published book of poetry, How to Cross the Desert.

Lassman, a Colorado native and Waldorf, Md. resident, is the author of Dawn Anyway, published by New Bay Books in 2022. Other of her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies.

Her poetry offers "a perfect combination of silence, touch and wisdom while the reader walks through the desert with her poems," writes Rachel Smith, College of Southern Maryland poet and professor.

How to Cross the Desert is the story of Lassman's desert journey, which her poems suggest also was a spiritual quest for the poet.

In the poem "How to Cross the Desert," Lassman writes:

The desert light will show you

what things do not matter.

Wonder at how many things

Do not matter.

In "The Wake of the Miracle, " Lassman writes:

Is this what it was like for Moses,

and Miriam, and Aaron

after the Red Sea calmed again

from swallowing Pharaoh's army,

when the wonder wore off,

questions began

the echo of the promise

faded in the desert heat,

yet there was nowhere else to go

but onward.

We had a few questions for Lassman about her new book.

NBB—We sometimes think of the desert as a lonely, empty place. But you present a desert with prairie dogs and flowing columbine and my favorite, the whiptail lizard with turquoise stripes. Did you find the desert as very alive?

KL—Absolutely. I really did see almost all the plants and animals I mention in the poems (yes, including the whiptail lizard!), and beyond that, the vibrant colors of the rock formations and the sky were so vivid and striking that they almost seemed to have a living presence, too.

NBB—How foreign to you was the desert before these journeys of discovery?

KL—I had been to Rocky Mountain National Park before as a child, but it was a different perspective to see it as an adult, and most of the other parks I wrote about I had not been to before, so yes, it did feel quite foreign as well as fascinating. This put me in the position of a learner, which was perfect for a journey.

NBB—Why did you decide to let eclipses be the driving force in these journeys?

KL—Because of my lifelong interest in astronomy and my husband's connection to the National Park Service, which gave him the idea to watch the eclipses at the parks that we went to. He and I found out when and where the eclipses were going to happen, and we planned both trips around them. I thought it would be interesting and fun, and it definitely was, but I didn't realize how deep the journey was going to be for me until we were there.

NBB—Is there a "call of the desert?" What is the desert saying to those who might want to visit one?

KL—What a great question. I don't think there is one single call. It would be different for each person. It would say what each individual needs to hear at that time.

NBB—Would you really be a cactus if you could be a plant, as you declare in a poem?

KL—No, I'm going to claim some poetic license on that one. Cacti are cool plants, and in that poem "Consider the Cactus" I wanted to observe and contemplate what they are like and their role in the ecosystem. But I think I'd rather be a morning glory, my favorite flower. Or maybe a cherry tree of the type that has those big yummy yellow-and-pink cherries.