AFTER POET TOMMY ARCHULETA’S mother died, he found a heavily marked-up homemade book on curanderismo among her things. That mixture of ancestral and herbal lore informs his sensorily elegiac new collection, Susto (University Press of Colorado). Interstitial poems called Remedios recur throughout dreamlike verses, doling out advice for protective and transcendent spells. Light a candle while you read: The mood is by turns ceremonial and languid, a flickering of light through darkness. Archuleta, who lives on Cochiti land, writes, "the darker/life becomes the more you//find forms/of silence//you never/before knew existed."
Read more: Poet Michelle Otero focuses on the Río Grande Bosque in her newest book of poems.