Burn Lake

by Carrie Fountain

Selected for the 2009 National Poetry Series by Natasha Trethewey Set in southern New Mexico, where her family's multi­cultural history is deeply rooted, the poems in Carrie Fountain's first collection explore issues of progress, history, violence, sexuality, and the self. Burn Lake weaves together the experience of life in the rapidly changing American Southwest with the peculiar journey of Don Juan de Oñate, who was dispatched from Mexico City in the late sixteenth- century by Spanish royalty to settle the so-called New Mexico Province, of which little was known. A letter that was sent to Oñate by the Viceroy of New Spain, asking that should he come upon the North Sea in New Mexico, he should give a detailed report of "the configuration of the coast and the capacity of each harbor" becomes the inspiration for many of the poems in this artfully composed debut.

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 25, 2010

About the author

Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Carrie Fountain’s debut collection of poems, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Penguin published her second collection, Instant Winner, in 2014. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among others.

A former fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Fountain is writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University in Austin, where she lives with her husband, playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, and their two children.

Her first novel, I’m Not Missing, will be published in July of 2018 by Flatiron Books.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes, when you're searching the stacks at your local library for a book you haven't read yet in the Dewey Decimal 811's, you stumble upon a book that appeals to you. This was my luck last week when I pulled a spine marked as Carrie Fountain's Burn Lake.

The book's cover is stamped as a winner in the National Poetry Series, a series I seriously had never heard of but wrote about here, where I also include two poems.

Overall, I was pleased by Fountain's everyday touch and simple-but-not style. I also liked the way she mined her past for more than a few coming-of-age poems. What I didn't like so much was the inclusion of "historical poems" about Spanish conquistadors visiting the sacred grounds of her childhood in New Mexico. Without them, the book would have burned that much brighter.

In any event, it's enough to send me looking for more Fountains, and that's always saying something when it comes to books, no?

[jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely marvelous place-making poetry drawing on the reveries and phantasms of spanish expeditionary records, bummed-out desert americana, and youthful, stabbing discord in the desolation of noble new mexico. stunning, arid, picturesque in its presentation, i fell in love with the state all over again from far, far away.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I guess this is definitely the best book of poetry ever published about my hometown (also the only one, at least the only one that I've ever read). I have weird mixed feelings because it's difficult for me to imagine the author as a fully functioning adult woman poet writer; I guess I'll always think of her as a coltish, loping freshman hovering in the general vicinity of my locker between classes.

I get what she was trying to do with this collection and I applaud the overarching concept. I think she almost pulled it off, but not quite. My ambivalence is partially based on my own subjective preference for poetry that is more lyrical and uses language more inventively. I don't care much for that flat-affect, clinical narration thing that a lot of younger poets are doing these days. And assuming that the 'I' of the poems is largely autobiographical, I think she fails to fully grapple with some issues re: privilege and her own family's role in the mythos of the place that could have made this collection much richer and more nuanced. Overall, an interesting read, but I did feel like it fell short of its promise in some ways.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am especially fond of poetry books that encompass sense of place and Carrie Fountain's book, Burn Lake, a winner in the National Poetry Series takes the reader to New Mexico in a stunning work of both progress and loss.

Burn Lake is a physical place in this collection and is the backdrop for many of Fountain's narrative poems. The lake itself is explored in a scattered sequence of poems. The first "Burn Lake" describes its genesis where the readers find out the town's favorite swimming hole was man-made and created by accident: "It was a revelation: kidney-shaped, deep/green there between the interstate/and the sewage treatment plant." Hardly the sentimental American pastoral, this poem's setting is echoed throughout the book in different "Burn Lake" poems including one description of death found on its shores: "We found a duck, a mallard, dead/on the shore, head split, eyes loose//yet when someone poked it with a stick/it shuddered suddenly//and stood up, then collapsed again/and died for real."

With those descriptions, we, as readers, readily know that this is not going to be a volume of poems about growing up in golden suburbia. Narratives about childhood and growing up are woven in between the Burn Lake poems. We learn about the narrator's brother who "favored cruelty" in "Getting Better" and a young girl's budding sexuality in "The Change." Fountain's poems are often grim, filled with lost and confused characters.

Still, in many ways, the book is filled with a quiet determination and sullen hope, as shown in one of my favorite poems, "Heaven" where the narrator details a walk with a friend and the ritual of wish making: "You were the leader, You'd stop/at the waterfall by the food court, dig a coin/from your pocket and toss it over your shoulder/into the fiberglass river."

Carrie Fountain's book was published last year, so yes, it's relatively new in the poetry world. It's been on my wish list for some time. I have to say that I wish I would have picked this collection up much sooner -- it is one of the best I have read in a long time, and as I always note when I find a first book from someone, I can't wait for her next collection.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read her most recent book, Instant Winner, a few months ago and liked it, but Burn Lake--I love. Girl is growing up, girl is wanting to be cool, girl makes silly mistakes, girl is learning things, girl realizes big truths. Fountain also weaves colonialism into this bold set of poems, which makes the reader wonder, how do we claim anything for our own? There's ridiculousness in existence, and there is yearning. There's so much to steal and take from Fountain's narrator. Like how to claim, after locking herself in the trunk of a car for the fun of it, that life isn't beautiful, "but I knew better than to hate it."

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to say, other than this is one of the greatest collections of poetry I know? Not a single false note is hit. Every line is true. Deeply moving, fiercely intelligent, with an unparalleled eye for detail. Especially good are: "Want" (which I just want tattooed all over my body), "Getting Better," "The Coast," "Embarrassment" (stunning & unforgettable), "Purple Heart," and "Socorro."

[xander ツ · Rating 4 out of 5]

this simple
learning; learning
how to hold
hopelessness
and hope together;

this was good but not a fav. 3.5 rounded to 4

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars because it made me feel something about the state of new mexico

[Jaga · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked it.
pretty much all of these show up in front of the eyes clearly but also not many can be felt, other than the humid wind on each of the pages, and i wonder if that's because they are not for me, or if the mixture of topics historical (shallow, shaving a table with a kitchen knife) and personal (real enough to feel warmth off) harm the the overall thing

i also wondered if some of these poems should have been poems and not something different. but occasionally, something was said in the only perfect way it could have been, so i think i get it


(Starting Small
Burn Lake 2
Theory of Fate
Summer Practice
Mother and Daughter ath the Mesilla Valley Mall
Burn Lake 3
Embarrassement)

[Emma Bohn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I just didn't connect with this collection of poems like I thought I would. Some lines here and there hit hard, but there's not a lot of instance when I thought one of the poems as a whole was really strong all the way through. I did however, like the very distinct atmosphere of southern New Mexico every one of the poems conjured up. The entire collection manages to continually immerse the reader in the bleak, hot climate of the New Mexico desert while also highlighting its long cultural history through poems fron the point of view of an actual historical figure, Don Juan de Onate, interspersed throughout the other poems set in present-day New Mexico. You could really feel the personal connection the author has to this place they were raised in. For a debut collection, it creates an impressively coherent atmosphere throughout. (My personal) Highlights include the titular "Burn Lake", "The Continental Divide", "Late Summer", "Late Spring in the Mesilla Valley", and "Burn Lake 4".

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all of these poems resonated with me, but every once in awhile Carrie Fountain says something perfectly.

In the poem "Starting Small," for example, this is about the most apt definition of suburbia - or maybe just postmodern America - I've come across:

Something big was built
on that vacant lot, something
indestructible

that wasn't big enough
and was torn down
so something bigger

that would immediately go out of business
could take its place.

In "Summer Practice," it's July and someone down the street is shooting off bottle rockets.

The dog noses open the door to my study, drops to the floor, faces
the window. After each brief whistle there's a moment,
then a pop, and she scrambles again to her feet. When I lean down

and put my hand on her forehead, she drops once again to the floor,
exhaling deeply, as if she's disappointed with herself, as if
she has been trying to teach herself a skill her animal body

won't allow her to learn.

From "Mother and Daughter at the Mesilla Valley Mall":

She's learning to walk
through department stores

with her mother so it looks like
they aren't together.

There's a technique to it
that involves browsing

and yawning, her hesitant body
pulled from rack to rack

by the bored points
of her thin hips...

Later,

...Her whole

body says, "Please, don't expect much,"

In "Burn Lake 3", adolescence in a nutshell:

my brother's stereo thumping in the bathroom
while he toiled over his pornography

I was shocked then
by my body, its plain intention to continue
with or without me...

In "Burn Lake 5,"

We each keep an untouched life beneath the one we've been given.

[pennyg · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my continuing quest to read more modern poetry I stumbled across this collection, chosen mainly for its intriguing cover. The title, at least in part, referring to a man-made lake in southern New Mexico with a perilous history. It feels autobiographical, the author knows of which she speaks, born and raised in this part of the country.

I did enjoy some of this collection, it's written in three parts combining a personal history and New Mexico's history. I could sense the heat and the poverty and a sparing dichotomy of hope and despair but the introduction of historical 16th century Spain into the collection just didn't work as well for me personally.

' ... Even at three, four a.m., those real lives could be seen speeding toward the blue eye of California. In late summer, the onion fields below my window pushed themselves up and out of the earth. They'd shed their dead, outer skins, even while, inside, their wet, white hearts were still dumbly growing.'

[Octavio Solis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous book of verse by one of our own great Southwestern poets. Although her grasp and her depth runs deep and universal, she calls to mind all the distinct sights and smells, ironies and epiphanies of my desert home in El Paso. She hails from Mesilla, NM, which is the nearest adjacent town in that state but the lives, moments, and revelations she writes about are wholly about my life in Texas. She calls up demon explorers like Juan De Oñate and paradisal wastelands like Jornada del Muerto and touches on the simple and yet so complex relationship between the people of this region and the region's barren heart itself. I can't wait to read her new volume.

[ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a big poetry person, but Carrie Fountain's poems in Burn Lake really stood out to me. Perhaps it is the American Southwest setting that is familiar to my Texan native self, but I really connected with a majority of the things she described and pondered.

The ones that stood out to me most were: "Starting Small" "Theory of Fate" "Mother and Daughter at the Mesilla Valley Mall" "Thrift" "The Coast" "Burn Lake 3" "Aubade at Bosque Redondo" and "Purple Heart" -- so basically, I liked a lot of them.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this collection over a month ago and still haven't quite gotten my head wrapped around what I want to say about it. Suffice it to say this book is brilliant, just fantastic... And easily one of my favorite volumes of poetry in a long time.

I heard the poem "Late Summer" on NPR and ordered the book that day and am so glad that I happened to be driving at the time and randomly heard it.

As I said, I don't exactly know how to articulate this book (so I may come back to this review some day) but just... buy it. It is so very good.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.D.O.R.E this collection (a National Poetry Series Winner). "Let me see if I understand you/ correctly." Those were the only words/ I could beg from my guts// in asking him to explain the feelings/ he'd waited// until we'd made it to the top of this mountain/ to admit he was no longer having for me (from Continental Divide). Fountain is a poet that makes me think "I could do that...there may be a place for my collection too."

[Jevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps it's based on my aesthetic, but I worry Carrie Fountain's longer poems move a little slowly. She covers more rhetorical territory in her shorter ones (Ordinary Sadness for example). But how she deals with American infrastructure (literally/figuratively), misfortune and fortune in fate (and how we are inclined to label them as such), and her childhood is fresh.

[Nicole Testa LaLiberty · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite thing about this collection of poetry is its surprise. I have the tendency to read poetry that is constantly surprising, and I enjoy that sort of work. But with Carrie Fountain's poems, every time I was about to write one of them off as conventional or too restrained, she would put a little, earth-shattering twist or image, right at the end, and I knew then to shut up.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

So obviously Instant Winner, her later book, represented a leap in terms of this poet's development.

That said, this is still some solid stuff. Coming of age, geographically parochial, some sinister sibling allusions.

If the difference between this one and Instant Winner is any indication we're in for a treat with what's to come.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things I love most about poetry is how good poets can say something with enormous weight in just a line or two. Carrie Fountain is a good poet, and this collection is full of poems that had me grabbing the nearest pen, needing to underline something I found beautiful and insightful. I really enjoyed these poems and look forward to reading more of Fountain's work.

[Joanna Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous book of poetry splicing small town life in the American SouthWest with sixteenth century explorer sent to discover new territory.
I love the structure of this book because it's simple, subtle, straight to the point and the heart.

[Darlene Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections I've read all year. I love her imagery, her ability to describe abstracts such as loneliness in haunting scenes. Very accessible but also rewarding. Can't wait to read more.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems read deceptively "accessible"...but they take root, grow and haunt. Simultaneously comforting and frightening, they are more acutely real than any I've read in a long time.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first encountered Carrie Fountain through The Writer's Almanac. Standouts from this collection include:

Starting Small
Mother and Daughter at the Mesilla Valley Mall
Socorro

[charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this collection. Fountain's strength is social observation ("...if we'd been quiet, we would've heard / nothing. And that silence, too, would've ruined us."—"Experience," "And that is the precise heartbreaking / of the past: that it doesn't return, not even when you don't want it to."—"Restaurant Fire, Truth or Consequences."), often at the very end of a poem as a beautiful, incisive denouement. Often these lines on their own were enough to make me feel as though a poem was worthwhile, regardless of the rest of the language or content.

However, the narratives of the poems were often poorly integrated into the observations: the commentary was independently lovely, but not enhancing to the story or even clearly connected at times. Additionally, the scope of the collection felt overambitious. About a third of the poems were about Fountain's growing up, a third were about Fountain's experience of Las Cruces, and the final third were about Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate's expeditions to what is now the southwestern United States. Some poems addressed multiple of these subjects. The first and second fold into each other better, but the poems about Oñate felt largely divorced from the rest of the collection. I also found them somewhat superficially interested in him as a historical figure (other than the epigraphs pulling from writings, they seemed distinctly speculative and nonspecific), and focused entirely on his initial exploration with no acknowledgement of the horrific violence against the Acoma. Odd choices around invoking a violent colonizer.

Poems I especially liked: "Burn Lake 2," "Restaurant Fire, Truth or Consequences," "Aubade at Bosque Redondo," and "Late Spring in the Mesilla Valley." Glad to have read the collection but probably won't seek out more of Fountain's work.

[Michael Whalen]

Favorite poem:

"Theory of Fate"

In that place, at that time,
the way it worked was

there came a moment—
maybe you brought it on yourself,
maybe not—

when you became the kind of person
you were meant to be.

It was simple.

If you were meant to be the kind of man
who'd hit a woman,

there'd come the moment—
the circumstances
wouldn't matter—

when you'd hit a woman
for the first time,

in the face or the neck
or the tender breast,

and the feeling of being
what you were meant to be
would settle upon you,

and you'd know
what to do or not do
to begin living life

that way, full of remorse
and shame or not,

and women would come to you
or stay away from you
or call the police
or murder you in your sleep.

depending
on the kind of person
they'd become.

This was the only way.

You were meant to drink; you'd drink.

You were meant to be found
one morning in a ditch
with your pants around your ankles
and your mouth full of mud,

and there you were.

If you were meant to be a bystander—
If you were meant to die young—
If you were meant to be born again—

At that time, in that place
this was the prevailing theory.

And this is the information
I was going on

the day I slipped behind the bar,
where just around the corner
my father

was selling his regrets to the world
in the late afternoon heat,

and I swiped a cigar for me
and the girl next door
to choke on behind the post office.

Any second my father could've
rounded the corner and caught me

stealing from him.
Yet there I was, taking it.

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book ever since I read it when it first came out. The opening poem, "Experience," is truly one of the poems that (a) I return to all the time and (b) sets up the experience (ha!) of the entire book. It's a book that I continue to recommend to friends again and again--it's fantastic.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Queen of enjambment.

[matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful poetry. Transports the reader to a very specific time of adolescence.
The poems evoke the longing of a life being lived at the edge of a highway, on a patch of dead grass.

[I also control the wind,sir · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a difficult time trusting poetry. This book gained that trust.