"Texas in Poetry presents a selection of Texas poems from the early days of the colony to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Hill includes such poets as Mirabeau B. Lamar, a Texas president and poetaster from the days of the Republic; Berta Harte Nance, author of the Centennial poem that begins "Other states were carved or born/But Texas grew from hide and horn" - lines that furnished at least one book title and occasioned a number of parodies. And, of course, one poem about Texas that is magnificent in its awfulness, "Lasca," with memorable lines like "Scratches don't count/In Texas down by the Rio Grande."". "But most of the poems in this volume are much superior to the representative early poems included. All the well-known poets in the state are included - writers like Walter McDonald and Betsy Feagan Colquitt and Vassar Miller - as well as newer writers. Nor has the editor failed to offer a generous sampling of the state's best minority voices - Sandra Cisneros, Carmen Tafolla, Rolando Hinojosa, Lorenzo Thomas, Jas. Mardis, Ray Gonzalez, and Teresa Paloma Acosta.". "The volume is divided into sections with titles suggested by well-known books by Texas authors. Some of the sections are "I'll Take Texas" (from Mary Lasswell's book); "Faces of Blood Kindred" (William Goyen's original title); "This Stubborn Soil" (from the first volume of William A. Owens' autobiography); and, from A. C. Greene's memoir about West Texas, "A Personal Country." Texas in Poetry can be read straight through as a commentary on life in the Lone Star State. Or it can be read a poem or author at a time. But if read straight through from "I'll Take Texas" to "No Quittin' Sense" the whole Texas experience as seen by more than one hundred poets cannot fail to make an impact on the reader."--BOOK JACKET.