Ethel Mortenson Davis lives in the mountain community of Continental Divide, NM. Trained as an artist at the University of Wisconsin--Madison,
her poetry is intensely visual, demonstrating the same life, color, and movement of her pastels. A member of the Zuni Mountain Poets, her poetry has influenced a number of New Mexico poets. Her lines often seem to have a beautiful simplicity concentrated on the magical landscape of New Mexico, evoking the high desert, red rock cliffs, elk, tarantulas, cactus, and the Native,
Hispanic, and Anglo residents of the area, but the outward simplicity and short lines can be misleading.
This is a poetry of intense emotion, reflection on her mid-western United States roots, and themes hidden in elegant, highly condensed metaphor.