From "The Badlands" by Ted Hughes

In 1959, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath took a road trip across the United States prior to their return to England. Before I ever read this poem, I'd traveled from Texas to California in 1993 on my way to grad school, and had a similar horrified reaction to the utter desolation of the desert landscape that I was traveling across.

From Ted Hughes's "Badlands," published in 1998:

...The canyons cooled. Indigo darkened.
Oozing out of the earth like ectoplasm.
A huge snake heaping out. "This is evil,"
You said. "This is real evil."
Whatever it was, the whole landscape wore it
Like a plated mask. "What is it?"
I kept saying. "What is it?"
As if that might force the whatever
To materialize, maybe standing by our car,
Maybe some old Indian.

"Maybe it's the earth,"
You said. "Or maybe it's ourselves.
This emptiness is sucking something out of us.
Here where there's only death, maybe our life
Is terrifying. Maybe it's the life
In us
Frightening the earth, and frightening us."