Pamela Steed Hill

Pamela Steed Hill has had poems published in close to a hundred journals and is the author of In Praise of Motels, a collection of poems published by Blair Mountain Press. She is an associate editor for University Communications at The Ohio State University.

To understand and appreciate fully Gary Snyder's "Anasazi" we need to know something about the Native American people who are the subject of the poem. The Anasazi are thought to be ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians, and they inhabited Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona from about 200 to 1300 A.D. They are remembered for their skills at horticulture, pottery making, basket weaving, and architecture, especially their "cliff houses." These dwellings - literally two- and three-story structures carved into the sides of steep cliffs and requiring ladders for entry and exit - replaced the partially underground homes where the Anasazi...