This paper is a development from workshops I have conducted exploring metaphors in poems about landscape—in particular the landscape of the southwest. In this paper I will apply Simon Schama’s (Landscape and Memory) notions of symbolic national landscapes to poets whose metaphorical language creates personal symbolic landscapes. The poets whose work I will discuss are Laura Tohe (Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation), Arthur Sze, and Michael Sowder. I will also include reference to my own poems from “Invisible Shores,” the limited edition art book published by Red Butte Press of the University of Utah.
