“The Mayan women of the Ciapas” in Mexico are extremely poor, and many are illiterate. Still, they’re rich in one thing: poetry, according to a New York Times story by Dinitia Smith. The work of 150 Mayan women has been collected into a bilingual book, Incantations, published by Woodlanders’ Workshop and collected and edited by Ámbar Past. Past first went to the area in 1973 as “a self-described hippie and renegade housewife, escaping an unhappy marriage,” reports Smith. “She stayed with some Mayan women and tuaght herself Tzotzil, one of the local Mayan languages.” Past tape-recorded and translated poems, “spells and hymns” by the women. “I was so deeply moved hearing in these mud huts these breathtakingly beautiful verses and phrases spoken or written 500 years ago,” she says.