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Perhaps in a future that is ions away, the stars will remember life on Earth, the life of planets, animals, and humans, which is precisely what Nolcha Fox is writing about in End of Earth, a document of that life in poetic lines about people, places, and things in her past and present. Her poems, each of them, are complemented by Mike Armstrong’s paintings, which are vivid, abstract, and evoke impressions suited to the particular mood of each poem. In her point of view, sensibilities, and brevity, Fox is our contemporary Emily Dickinson, and very much herself, her own person. Three devices that make her utterances poems in End of Earth are metaphor, personification, and repetition.

      Greed is the subject of “They Circle.” Hucksters, charlatans, thieves who misrepresent themselves, preying upon the vulnerable, are “money vampires.”  Fox sets up a scene of roadkill and vultures. Outrageously, the roadkill, a dead possum, is speaking. With three words, “a second look,” Fox shifts the scene from outdoors to indoors, and a person, perhaps by a computer, and perhaps indoors. Part of the poem’s economy lies in this ambiguity. The speaker could be indoors, or in an outdoor market, or even in a mall. Then she smoothly goes back to the roadkill.  Form and content meld.  Just as vultures circle in the sky, imagery takes the reader back to the beginning. Additionally, there’s the “cook” and “spatula” kitchen diction, which adds another dimension, evoking the density of texture needed to make a poem about greed that is powerful in that less is more. Fox indeed knows her way around a metaphor.

     The sun is personified as feminine, as in the adage “when the fat lady sings,” in “The sun throws,” again with great economy. So, in the middle, the euphony of “singing snow into icicles” signals a shift in imagery. In eight lines, a roof, a mountain, and a stage all fit wonderfully into this poem, thanks to its structure of personification —a poetic device Fox uses satirically in “Gardening.”  The wonder of “Gardening” is that the statement it makes is not only for today, but for times past. The human characteristic of stupidity is given to plant life.  It’s a thing people cultivate; thus, the garden itself becomes a society, a broader and abstract entity, much like social media. The gardener “tells her friends’ stupidity” is a good thing, that it will provide nourishment and health, like a squash.  The colloquial “buy” followed by the agricultural “stalk” concludes this poem in which the speaker means the opposite of what she says, and the import of what she says is achieved by personification: an attribute of human nature manifests itself in the form of a plant.

     Fox employs repetition with variation well in “Pieces and Parts.” “No one sees…No one takes…When each one walks…,” a poem in which a “thingamabob” coexists with a “coffin” and the self interacts with the other. The tone in “Pieces and Parts” is defiant; the speaker defies nothing less than…death (which is perhaps why Emily Dickinson wrote poems). In Fox’s “If I Can’t Overcome,” the tone is resolved. Its structure of repetition, “let me be…let me be…let me be…let me breathe…let me welcome” lends to its elegance. 

                            …let me be the stillness 

                            that seeps into the clouds 

                            before the rain.

                            Let me be the silence

                            that soothes the branches

                             just before the wind

                             announces snow…

Just as Mike Armstrong creates lines, angles, circles, squares, and other shapes that move through a visual pattern, Nolcha Fox creates lines that move through a verbal pattern. Reading her poems and revisiting each one yields both appreciation and pleasure. Whether light-hearted or dead serious, she is always exacting. She runs the gamut of human emotions and experiences in poems that stand not just for today but for times past and times to come.

Copyright © 2025 Peter Mladinic

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Author Biography

Peter Mladinic was born and raised in New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas in 1985. Professor emeritus at New Mexico Junior College, where he was a member of the English faculty for 30 years. During that time, he served as a board member of the Lea County Museum and as president of the Lea County Humane Society. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA. His most recent poetry book is House Sitting. His website is https://petermladinic.com/.