God of Sand and Fire

Benjamin Alire Saenz's breathtaking poem "To the Desert," updates the ancient sonnet form which Donne once used to praise the Christian God, and turns it into a revolutionary invocation of a pantheistic deity embodied by the desert itself. Through a flawless onomatopoeia which evokes the brushing and rustling and hissing sounds of the desert, he weaves sharply observant images to bring the very scent and color of the desert to the reader's mind. From this evocative nature poetry he increasingly moves towards personifying and deifying the desert itself, addressing it directly from the beginning, and eventually begging it to consume him. His reverential tone, which so warmly pays tribute to Dante's devotional hymn "Batter my heart Three-personed God), combines with his clear diction and imagery to allow him to make statements in verse (such as this about the desert being a god) that might seem...
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