Phyllis Hotch’s poetic legacy
ONE OF TAOS’ LEADING LIGHTS has passed on. Phyllis Hotch was born in New York City and raised a family and taught English in Massachusetts before making Taos her home.
She once said when she visited Taos for the first time, she stood on the Río Grande Gorge Bridge and was immediately hooked.
Hotch and her husband Sy were both raised in a vibrant Jewish community in the Bronx. Both raised by people who were liberal social democrats; believing that people should help each other and the government should help them do it.
After earning a degree in English from Brooklyn College with minors in psychology and sociology in 1948, she worked as a welfare investigator in Harlem. When her youngest daughter started kindergarten, she became a high school English teacher in Framingham, Massachusetts.
“I thought everybody loved English, that English was their favorite subject. Teaching English would be fun,” she once noted.
As a poetry coordinator for Arts Wayland, a creative arts center in Massachusetts, Hotch organized readings, seminars and workshops and supervised competitions for poetry manuscripts. She worked with poets Denise Levertov and Edward Hirsch among others.
By the time the Hotchs arrived in Taos, local Jewish people were already gathering for holiday services, and they found their place in the small community B’nai Shalom, which met at the Mesa Vista School on Blueberry Hill.
“Sy called himself a Jewish atheist,” Phyllis said, “but we liked to get together with them and eat. Sy Hotch was their treasurer for a number of years.”
Soon, another group formed the Taos Jewish Center. “They have 16 flavors of Jews,” Hotch quipped. “It’s amazing how many non-Jews are members. It’s important for people to have voices and a place to go.”
She was involved in many programs the TJC developed, including sending food to the homeless shelters once a week, along with the Chesed Project’s mission to reduce social isolation and loneliness, and the attendant physical and emotional health risks. A boon in these troubled times.
Hotch’s favorite event at the TJC, was the annual Passover Seder celebrating freedom from slavery and oppression; with wine, ritual foods and songs telling the story of the Exodus.
“We started with about 50 people,” she said in a 2014 interview, “Then St. James Episcopal Church joined up and we fed about a 100 people in an ecumenical, all-inclusive celebration.”
But Hotch is perhaps best known for her work with SOMOS (Society of the Muse of the Southwest). She served on the Board of Directors of SOMOS and as president for 14 of the 22 years.
She worked hard to bring PEN to New Mexico, to be a voice for censored and imprisoned writers; and she coordinated events in support of endangered and disappeared writers in Latin America.
She held weekly readings of Poets for Peace in the months before the Iraq invasion; and started two programs to bring attention to the murdered Women of Juarez.
Hotch initiated programs, which SOMOS maintains, to offer partners for the homebound and a vibrant Youth Mentorship Program that has lasted for two decades.
She was incredibly supportive of young writers and especially poets, perhaps because Hotch considered herself first and foremost, a poet.
“People are afraid of poetry,” Hotch once said, “afraid of not understanding it. They need help.”
Hotch’s first poetry book was titled “A Little Book of Lies,” her second, “No Longer Time,” chronicled her experience of losing a daughter.
In her third book, “3 a.m.,” Hotch explored aspects of aging, including her husband’s Alzheimer’s disease which led to his death at the end of 2013. She told longtime Taos News contributor Ariana Kramer, in a 2017 interview, that writing those poems was like having “a thread to hold onto.” “3 a.m.” won first place in the Poetry Book category at the 2014 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.
Hotch published a fourth book of poems called with Nighthawk Press called “Carousel.”
“She was working on a fifth manuscript, and, wrote poetry right up to the end,” Kramer, who was a close friend of Hotch’s, told Tempo.
Poet, James Nave remembers his long association with her, “Within a week of my arrival in Taos in 1995, at least three people said you must meet Phyllis Hotch, she’s a terrific writer, a social activist, and president of SOMOS.
“When Phyllis and I met at Café Tazza, we’d hardly settled down when she went straight to her primary question: “What can I do, what can you do to make Taos one of the most significant and influential literary towns in the nation?”
“Anyone who knew Phyllis, will tell she meant business and they will also tell you that’s why she devoted the last 30 years of her literary life to answering her question in the affirmative. Phyllis Hotch, like Mabel Dodge Luhan, will be remembered as one of the primary forces that established Taos as one of the premier literary towns in America, and Phyllis helped make this happen because she did her work publicly and privately,” Nave says.
“Publicly she showed up to every literary event she could possibly attend, even in her last few years she made it to the writer’s circles and read her new work,” Nave adds. “Privately, the last time I spoke to her she said I may not be able to see very well but I can still write. She was writing a few days before she left us.”
Hotch collaborated on occasion with Taos composer Joanne Forman. Forman, a prolific composer of over a hundred pieces of music said of Hotch’s poetry: “When it’s right, the words just rise up off the page. Phyllis has the gift of writing poetry that, in the words of T.S. Eliot, is ‘a condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.’ The words seem simple, but they resonate.”
Maria Garcia, president of the Board of SOMOS paid homage to the late poet.
“In the 1990s, I was very involved in SOMOS activities – attending readings and workshops and serving as a mentor in the Young Writers Program that Phyllis had started,” Garcia adds.
“In the late ‘90s, Phyllis asked me if I was interested in joining the SOMOS Board of Directors. I was flattered and excited about the opportunity and said yes.
“Soon I realized that Phyllis and her husband Sy were the heart and soul of the organization. From setting up chairs and refreshments at events to hosting visiting out-of-town writers or selling used books outside the SOMOS office when it was in the old Smith’s building, Phyllis and Sy were always there.
“And, when I realized that in between her volunteer work, Phyllis was preparing a book of her own poetry for publication, I was both impressed and inspired,” Garcia continues. “I will always remember Phyllis’ commitment to our writing community as a poet, a teacher, a mentor and an activist. I will remember her dedication to SOMOS where she served on the Board of Directors for over 20 years and as president for 14 of those. When I am missing her, I will look to her poetry to be reminded of her tenderness and strength.”
Hotch leaves a lasting, literary legacy, one that will continue to enrich this community well into the future.
“A poet to the end, Phyllis left us peacefully in the morning light after a full moon night.” Ariana Kramer told Tempo.
One of her poems from “3 A.M.” sums up her life succinctly: Eine Kleine Nacht (One Small Night) Night was tight around me and the moon sent a ray – only one – along my bed I played it with my fingers like a harp and filled the room There will be a reading of Hotch’s work, and celebration of her life at SOMOS (in the back parking lot) on Nov. 7. For more info, see