The Best American Poetry

Elinor Nauen & Lord Byron (Terence Winch)

 

After the publication of his early work Childe Harold, Lord Byron (1788--1824) memorably said that he “awoke one morning and found myself famous.”  He became, in fact, something of a global superstar, adumbrating  the kind of fame later reserved for the likes of Sinatra and Elvis, who weren’t even poets. English lit students will remember his club foot, his incestuous affair with his half sister, his invention of “the Byronic hero,” his death at age 36 while fighting for Greek independence from the Turks. His great masterpiece is, of course, Don Juan, a poem of more than 2,000 stanzas of ottava rima, a nimble 8-line vessel that rhymes abababcc and is borrowed from the Italians. This extraordinary poem, which Byron called an “Epic Satire,” remains funny, biting, and highly readable. The “Fragment” that usually begins texts of the poem includes these lines:

                                And for the future—(but I write this reeling,

                Having got drunk exceedingly today,

                                So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)

                I say—the future is a serious matter—

                And so—for God’s sake—hock and soda water!

He is, he writes later, “fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,/A lobster salad, and champagne, and chat.”

  I loved reading Byron long ago when I was a student, but my impression has been that his fame has waned, his influence abated, in the 187 years since his death.  At least that was my feeling until I came upon one of the most impressive and audacious long poems of our time—Elinor Nauen’s So Late into the Night (Rain Mountain Press, NYC), some 625 stanzas of ottava rima containing a poem that is at once a homage to Don Juan and a completely contemporary comic epic in its own right.  Like Byron’s, Nauen’s poem is full of acute observations, wry reflections, loves, resentments, and silliness.  You will learn about her two romantic obsessions (Derek Jeter and her husband Johnny Stanton), her thoughts on  poetry, politics, even cars:

                The fastest car I ever drove (versus

                The car I drove fastest) must have been Paul

                Stallings’ Ferrari. Slowest? The worst is

                My ’70 Datsun 510, which qual-

                Ified for many unkind curses

                Each time it wobbled. Not a car to haul

                Ass in! I loved it, though, as I did my

                Every vehicle. Till we said goodbye.   

 

 And belief:

                                        ...I can’t seem to endorse

                A stance on the presence of God or soul.

                I’ve resolved to assign whatever force

                Is the reason for existence the role

                And name “God.”  It’s how to live in the presence

                Of the mystery that tests my essence.

Part of the narrative of So Late into the Night involves a road trip, but, really, the language of the entire poem has unrelenting drive and acceleration, a rollicking momentum that gets you home right before the poetry curfew kicks in.  Byron and ottava rima, Nauen says in her introduction, gave her the means to “contain, shape and propel everything I could possibly want to say—narration, social commentary, description—in a persona I could both reinvent and stay true to. I knew I would discover more and more ways to live inside this form.”  She has certainly succeeded. Next thing you know, she’s going to wake up famous. 

 

Jimmy Cagney's Last Scene in "The Roaring Twenties"

 
courtesy Terence Patrick Winch

"Falling Out of Bed in a Room with No Floor" by Terence Winch [by David Lehman]

Terence Winch's new book, Falling Out of Bed in a Room with No Floor (Hanging Loose Press), his best to date, expresses the poet's defiant resistance to the forces of intellectual conformism -- it asserts the prerogatives of the autonomous self against all that would militate against it. Like a Bartleby for our times, Winch would prefer not to go along with whatever the hell he is supposed to accompany. Sometimes the imp of the perverse takes charge, as in "Don't Tell Me You Love Me": "The students arrive for class, full of a love / for learning, I could care less. / They are happy it's been raining for days, / the drought finally over. But I liked the drought. / That's the way I roll. I don't fucking transcend. / I brood. I complain."  Sometimes he bravely presses the reality principle against the insincere promissory notes of a culture that issues them too freely, as in "Oral History": "You promised me a raise, but when I went to see the boss, / they fired me. You said meet me on the corner / and I'll give you a ride. / I'm still on the corner. / You guaranteed you'd call me right back. / I'm still standing by the phone. You said if / I ate my broccoli, I'd grow up big and strong. / Yet I'm a miserable weakling."

Winch's poems exemplify the value of an organizing conceit ("Belief System"), of wit as an engine for invention and discovery ("Remorse Code'), and of "the incessant hum of erotic desire" ("The Jennifer Connelly Sestina," "Sex Elegy," "Eternal Love"). He has great last lines -- the title of the book is one of them. The first poem in the collection defines things to come: "The future sprawls out like a drunk on a bed." The last poem in the book tells of what is past and passing:  "The present is the life insurance premium automatically / deducted from your paycheck, while the past burns / out of control in a vacant lot on the outskirts of town." Between the two everything happens: sons rebel against the fathers they become, photograph albums are opened and by the time they are closed the people have died, and the revolution has fizzled into a busted cliche: "We all showed up for the rally that night with our guitars / and sang a Joan Baez song about rivers and stars. / Give a man a fish that wll last forever."

This is a moving book, a funny book ("Dad, you're not funny"), a poignant book, a charming hook, a disarming look, a shout in the street, a cop on his beat who is the hero of his imaginary son's third-grade assignment, a dance with the erotic angels of Paradise, a politically incorrect orgasm, a flagrantly delicious pie in the face of somone who should know better, a dream within a dream with a dish of pistachio ice cream and the prospect of a warm bath with the radio playing the songs of Destiny, a young woman who works for a travel agency in Ottawa. In these pages disappointment turns into the noblest form of rapture. -- DL

Ai Weiwei, Dylan, and Despotism in China (Terence Winch)

At first I felt a profound disappointment, and some anger, when I heard the reports that Bob Dylan had allowed Chinese authorities to censor his setlist for a recent concert in China.  There would be no answers blowin’ in the Chinese wind.  At a time when progressives in this country are leaderless and de-energized, when “the left” and “the far left” seem more like scare terms of the right than realities, Dylan’s seeming accession to the demands of the Chinese autocracy was even harder to understand and accept. 

Particularly in light of the arrest and disappearance of the mesmerizing Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei, whose courage in the face of despotism is truly inspirational.  If you have not been following the Ai Weiwei story, there is an abundance of discussion going on. My friend Michael Lally, for one, has been highlighting the case of Ai Weiwei on his blog Lally’s Alley.

Ai Weiwei was arrested by Chinese authorities on April 3rd, and has not been heard from since. News updates are readily available on-line (see, e.g., this piece). Frontline also offers an excellent short film delineating Ai Weiwei's life and career.   

Meanwhile, Maureen Dowd went after Dylan in the Times, only to be savaged herself by Sean Wilentz in The New Yorker.

By now, I had begun to feel the need for further reflection. One focus of mine was Dylan's attraction to the strange turn, especially in the last 10 or 12 years. Highlights include:

■His awkward and extended appearance on "Dharma & Greg" in 1999.

■His bizarre Victoria's Secret ad in 2004

■His arrest in New Jersey in 2009 essentially for being an "an eccentric old man"  wandering around with no i.d.and wearing two raincoats.

■ And my personal favorite—the video he did of "Must be Santa" to promote his 2009 Christmas in the Heart album. 

Dylan is clearly playing by his own rules, and I find myself coming around to his side. Is there really a censor in China who could capably de-code Dylan’s performance to ensure his songs wouln't rock the rule of the authorities over there?  I think not. I begin to suspect tricksterism. Dylan clearly feels no obligation to be a spokesperson for anything or anyone.  He’s made that very clear for a long time. He doesn’t want anyone dictating his behavior as an artist. I find myself thinking that his alleged cave-in to Chinese regime is not worth taking seriously. He likes to confound.  As does Ai Weiwei.

Whose father was a famous poet named Ai Qing (1910-1996), exiled during the Cultural Revolution and forced to clean toilets. “To live is to struggle,” he writes in this 1978 poem:

Fossil
With such agility in your movements,
Such buoyancy in your strength,
You leaped in the foam
And swam in the sea.

Unfortunately a volcano's eruption
Or perhaps an earthquake
Cost you your freedom
And buried you in the silt.

After millions of years
Members of a geological team
Found you in a layer of rock
And you still look alive.

But you are now silent,
Without even sight.
Your scales and fins are whole
But you cannot move.

So absolutely motionless,
You have no reaction to the world.
You cannot see the water or the sky,
You cannot hear the sound of the waves.

Gazing at this fossil,
Even a fool can learn a lot:
Without movement
There is no life.

To live is to struggle
And advance in the struggle;
Even if death is inevitable.
We should use our energy to the fullest.

(for a selection of Ai Qing's poems, visit this site.) 

Doug Lang's 70th Birthday (Terence Winch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Susan Campbell, Doug Lang, Terence Winch. Cafe De Luxe, D.C., April 10, 2011

 

Today marks the 70th birthday of my good friend Doug Lang, who came to the U.S. by way of Wales (Swansea), Greece (Paros), and England (London) in 1973.  Since his arrival he has been a major figure in Washington’s literary world, as poet, teacher, impresario, and mentor to many.  He remains on the job as a beloved and popular professor at the Corcoran College of Art, where he has taught since 1976.  He writes amazing poems that inspire his friends, who are usually the only ones who get to read them.  That situation will be corrected when his large selected poems, called In the Works, comes out in the near future from Rod Smith’s Edge Books in DC.  Yesterday, Doug and his friend Sandra Rottmann threw a party at the Cafe Deluxe, near the National Cathedral. Some people came from far—Diane Ward came in from L.A., Tom Mandel and Beth Joselow from Lewes, Delaware—and near (Andrea Wyatt and Lansing Sexton, Peter Inman & Tina Darragh, Rod Smith & Mel Nichols, Phyllis Rosenzweig & Alan Wallach, James Huckenpahler, Becky Levenson & R.T. Smith, Bernard Welt and Arthur Gary, Lee Haner & Carla Badaracco, Casey Smith & Laura Peterson, Tom & Linda Green, Kathryn Wichman, Pat Kolmer and Bo Stanley, Jesse & Francesca Winch, and Susan Campbell).  Everyone had an excellent time. I delivered the toast, which was called "Doug Is Awesome," a sentiment shared by many.

 

l. to r.: Lee Haner (back to camera), Rod Smith, P. Inman, Tina Darragh, Mel Nichols, Carla Badaracco, Andrea Wyatt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doug has been writing a lot of experimental sonnets recently. Here’s one he emailed me a few weeks ago:

The Sinking Colony sonnet

 I am tracing a skinny dribble of memory, playing into a zone of shimmering beauty.

THIS IS MY LIFE. She say my name, she say my name, she say my name, she say my

name. Today, now, today in this metropolis the women are dressed to keel in their

widebrimmed hats, their Manolo Blahniks, their Proenza Schoulers, their Paul Smiths,

their Collette Dinnigans. Their legs are short, their asses are huge, their teeth are

crooked, their lips are luscious, their hands are gnarly, their dogs are vicious, man. 

They all dig LeanSpa with Acai. J'espère que je ne vous ai pas deranges. Don’t bogart

that joint my friend… and it’s 1, 2, 3, what’re we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t

give a damn, next stop is Vietnam, and it’s 5, 6, 7, open up the pearly gates. Do you

think that anyone calls Bill Gates “Pearly”? I know who: Buddha ha-ha. In the

darkness of a stand of larches I use NLS Thera A 3mm and a mixture of Dianichi

sinking pellets. This has done wonders for my fronts. I also treat them with Tetra

Jumbo Krill. Penguin poo viewed from space reveals new Antarctic colony locations.

& Bob’s your uncle. I’ll never forget you. I'll never forget how we promised one day

Lee Lally's These Days (Terence Winch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lee Lally, early 1970s, at home in the house on Emory Place in DC.  Photo (c) by John Gossage.

 

I don’t know whether Lee Lally would have become a poet of significant accomplishment had she lived long enough, but I suspect she would have. I met her when I first arrived in Washington, DC in 1971, the same time I met her husband Michael Lally. We all became good friends. In fact, when Michael and Lee eventually divorced, I was the mutually agreed-upon witness for both of them at the divorce hearing. Lee became a leader in DC's feminist and gay circles for a while, but wound up with a boyfriend towards the end of her short life. In the late ‘70s, Lee and her companion often came down to The Dubliner pub on Capitol Hill when my band was playing there. She loved the music, the beer, the atmosphere, and I was always happy to see her. Lee's enjoyment of life's pleasures sadly ended, however, when she became the unfortunate victim of medical malpractice while undergoing surgery, and wound up in a coma for six years, before finally passing away on March 3rd, 1986, leaving behind two teenage children, Caitlin and Miles. There’s little lingering evidence of her work that I have been able to uncover. The most extensive account of her life and work that I know of appeared in 2007 in Doug Lang’s now largely dormant blog on DC poetry, in a piece that includes a brief remembrance by Doug and a short biographical sketch of Lee by Michael Lally. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lee Lally published only one chapbook, These Days, which came out in 1972 from our poetry collective, Some of Us Press.  Here are two poems from that book:

 

Hurricanes

They name them after women.

You’ve been through a few

you say.

Hurricanes, tornadoes,

tropical storms,

women.

I understand that natural rage.

 

Tropical storm Agnes

swept through tonight

like a real lady.

Greeted rich and poor

with equal vengeance.

The poor will remember her

longer

with less detail.

With wild breath,

unyielding

she spit.

Small rivers run

now

in the streets.

I understand that rage.

 

Tornadoes, tropical storms,

hurricanes,

they name them

after women.

 

__________________________

 

“Never Take More Money to the Bar

Than You’ll Drink up or Gamble Away”

                for my Grandmother who said that

 

Mamie was six foot tall and carried

a hard salami, so hard

she had used it a few times as a billy club.

They were all you needed you told me.

You drank with your friend

and called to giggle at two in the morning

in a way I understood.

                                He left you alone

                                with four children

                                and is not dead yet.

You were 27 one day and 65 the next.

Save electricity, you said, with the one

lightbulb plan.  I never noticed the darkness.

The optometrist told me different and I remember

you squinting at Elizabeth Taylor on magazine covers

in the dusk light at the kitchen window.

You were strong enough to open all jars alone.

                                The daughter died in your arms.

                                The sons turned their paralyses

                                into their energies.

The amusement park trips even when I was

a little too old.  Mostly for the boat ride.

The apple piggy bank, the apple kuchen,

homemade sausage Easter, Christmas.

You worked, even for fun your hands working.

Worked till you died rubbing the bodies

of the ‘wealthy ladies.’

They loved you.

 

I loved you, Anna, of the strong hands,

rubbing backs

until their troubles had been massaged away.

Ours were just beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lee Lally & Terence Winch, Mass Transit poetry reading, early '70s, DC. Photo (c) by Jesse Winch.

 

A Bronx Irish Christmas Long Ago (Terence Winch)

  
In the kitchen at 1912 Daly Ave, Bronx, NY, ca. 1961: Paddy Winch, Bridie (nee Flynn) Winch, my brother-in-law Kenny Reich, Jesse [Jimmy] Winch, Terence  Winch, P.J. Conway.

 

C E L E B R A T I O N

___________________________

In our world, nothing compared

with Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

God’s power surging through the congregation,

from altarboys in our stiff collars and big red bows,

to the solid men of the parish in their finest array:

Blue suits, gold wrist watches, crisp white shirts.

The women perfumed and girdled, lipsticked

and bejeweled.  Enough incense

in the air to do the Wise Men proud.

 

The procession wound through the church,

organ honking, voices lifted in the special

Christmas sense of the slate wiped clean

and the universe beginning anew.

The tree in the house lit with fat colored bulbs

that looked good enough to eat. The old suitcase

full of fragile decorations, buried treasure found

every year on Christmas Eve and set free again.

The baby Jesus alive and well!  Herod thwarted!

 

This called for presents.  Toys, games, maybe

a watch or a knife.  Along with Jesus came the whole

cast of Yuletide characters—Santa, Rudolph,

the Chipmunks, Bing Crosby, Frosty, Scrooge. 

I’m surprised the Easter Bunny didn’t crash

the event.  My father put out apple pie

and a glass of milk for Sanny, the remaining traces

of which on Christmas morning were proof enough

for me and my brother Jimmy of the entire

supernatural infrastructure of Bronx Irish culture.

 

But it was the party after Midnight Mass

that I remember most.  Relatives and neighbors

would pour into our apartment for an all-nighter.

My mother would get the percolator going,

and start making breakfast for half the parish.

Bacon, eggs, blood pudding, plates of fresh rolls

with poppy seeds bought that day

in the Treat Bakery on Tremont Avenue. 

 

Eating breakfast at two in the morning!

This was a miracle for a ten-year-old boy. 

Bottles of Seagram’s and Canadian Club

stood at attention on the kitchen table,

silver ice bucket ringed with penguins

awaiting duty beside them.  Ladies smoking

and gossiping.  Glasses clinking.  Laughter

throughout the house.  The smell of pine,

the delicious aroma of sizzling bacon,

all welcoming Jesus back for another year.

 

Then the music and singing would start up,

my father on the banjo, P. J. Conway on the box.

The Stack of Barley, The Lakes of Sligo,

medleys of marches, waltzes, and polkas.

Theresa McNally, from my mother’s own town

in Galway, would sing “Galway Bay.”  Steps would

be danced, jokes told, more drinks mixed and gulped.

 

I would go to bed so filled with the spirit

it seemed impossible to believe that life could

ever return to normal.  Lying there exhausted,

but anxious to sneak down the hall at the earliest

opportunity and tear open the tantalizing packages,

I believed in everything: Jesus our Lord, Santa

our magic benefactor, my parents the immortal source

of the ongoing celebration that could never end.   

 

 [from Boy Drinkers, Hanging Loose Press, 2007]

 

Celebration, read by Pat Broaders of the Chicago-based band Bohola

 

 

P.J. Conway, my father Paddy Winch, and Brian Keenan in 1958.  P.J. and my father performed locally in NY as "The Two Pats."  If they had a drummer for any particular gig, it would either be me, my brother Jesse, or P.J.'s nephew Brian Keenan, who immigrated from England in the '50s.  Brian went on to become the drummer for The Chambers Brothers, who were popular in the '60s and later.  He died pretty young, and lived pretty hard, as I recall. I am the steward of P.J.'s Walters D/C# accordion and my father's Vega tenor banjo, seen in this photo. I used to have one of those green plaid tuxedo jackets, too, but it has vanished.

You might also like:

The Chambers Brothers

The Floating Crowbar & The Rambling Pitchfork: The Poetry of Irish Tune Titles (Terence Winch)

Not long ago, I was contemplating this medley of tunes from an album called Stormy Weather by the excellent traditional band Beginish:

I'm Waiting for You

Touch Me If You Dare

The Gooseberry Bush

And I thought, there's almost a narrative contained in the names of these three reels, an abbreviated sexual story whose climax takes place in a gooseberry bush. And, musically, the tunes seem to belong together.  It must have been intentional­—Beginish (pictured below) seems like a witty collection of people.

The Moving Cloud, The Flowing Tide, Banish Misfortune, Paddy Gone to France, the Girl That Broke My Heart, The Pope's Toe, We Were Drinking and Kissing the Ladies, I Have No Money, Money in Both Pockets, The Cat's Rambles to the Child's Saucepan—just a random list off the CDs closest to my keyboard.  But there is often a high degree of wit, metaphor, and color in tune titles (and here I am distinguishing between songs, which are sung, and tunes, which are instrumental pieces), along with the suggestion of a story. 

Of course, many tune names are more descriptive than evocative—George Whyte's Favourite,  The Green Fields of America, the Longford Collector, Sligo Maid, and thousands more.  But as you enter into a tune, going though the process of learning it so that you eventually know it by heart, so that each note and each line of music has an inevitability to it, it starts to seem that the notes are almost like words with their own story to tell.  There are shifting moods, funny turns of phrase, surprising developments in the melody line, satisfying resolutions, all found right there in the music.  And often the names of tunes seem exactly right for the music they call forth.  The Bucks of Oranmore, a big five-part,  get-the-hell-out-my-way reel that everyone knows and that is often the grand finale for any number of group-playing situations, seems  to summon up a football-team of Galway linebackers ready to roll right over you. [the video features John Whelan's version of Bucks]

The Rainy Day, on the other hand, has a moody, overcast feel, while the Boogie Reel rocks the house and practically goes airborne in the B part.  For me, and I think for many other musicians, tunes speak in their own language, and I increasingly see tunes and poems as very closely related experiences.

It must be said, however, that many musicians, while they may know a thousand tunes, wouldn't be able to tell you the names of a dozen of them.  And tune nomenclature can be very inconsistent, confusing, or mistaken.   The previously cited Boogie Reel, e.g., is a composition by John Nolan, the first Irish-American to win the All-Ireland button accordion championship, yet I have at least four versions of the same tune by Irish-born players, all of whom call it The Durrow.  Tellingly, these misnamed versions of the Boogie Reel seem a bit lackluster to me, deficient  in the dynamism you get with Nolan's (or Billy McComiskey's) recording of it.    Maybe if those players had the name right, the tune would have taken off the way it was intended to.

(Here's Billy's version of Boogie, followed by his composition, The Controversial.)

Boogie Reel - The Controversial

      

 

Memo to Bridie Flynn (Terence Winch)

My mother's name was Bridget Flynn.  One of eleven children, she was born just outside of the town of Loughrea, in county Galway, Ireland, on 23 November 1906.  Eight of her siblings stayed in Ireland, so I have many cousins there. The house (greatly modernized) and land are still in the family, owned by my cousin Martin Flynn, with whom I am close.  My mother immigrated to New York sometime in the early 1920s.  She married my father, Patrick Winch, in 1930. I am the youngest of their five children (first came Kevin, then Patricia, Eileen, and James).

Known as Bridie, my mother died on 14 January 1962, at age 55, after a long struggle with breast cancer. I was 16 at the time, and took her death very hard. In many ways that loss has marked me for life, and its aftermath has certainly had an impact on my writing. I had forgotten about the poem included here, which was written in 2005 and has never before been published.

My mother was funny, smart, and tough, with a bountiful supply of Irish farmgirl wisdom: you have to eat a pound of dirt before you die, she'd say. Or: you'll be better before you get married.  Or: you could talk the cross off an ass. I would guess that the photo above was taken when she was about 17, probably not long after arriving in the U.S. But since she came here as something akin to an indentured servant, I wondered about the stylish outfit she is wearing in the photo.  My cousin Mary Winch suggests that the photography studio may have provided it.  My mother missed Ireland all her life, but loved New York and hated going beyond the city limits.  The photo below is one of the last I have of her, taken by the back door of the Dew Drop Inn on 114th Street in Rockaway Beach, Queens, in the summer of 1960. Rockaway was "The Irish Riviera" in those days, and we spent all or part of the summer there when I was growing up. She was already sick when the photograph was taken, but not yet bedridden.     

___________________________________________________

­­­­­

Memo to Bridie Flynn

Your eldest son says he is dying fast, but he’s been claiming

that for years and still seems solid and hardy. Your middle son’s life

is an ongoing party of which he is the host. Your youngest son

has a job with his own little cubicle. He walks a lot, listens to music.

Makes tea every hour and a half or so, like all the Irish. 

For your elder daughter, life is a very happy

social event.  She lives in a doublewide in Florida

with her husband, who just turned seventy-five. She loves

to talk, but her health isn’t too good. Your younger daughter,

the family beauty, is also the most spiritual of us all.

 

You’d be ninety-nine if you were still alive.  But you found

it necessary to die in 1962.  Jesus, Mom, 1962!  Kennedy

was president. I was in high school. Even I, your baby,

am now older than you ever were.  I knew there was no God

when you died.  I knew there was no afterlife when you

failed to visit me from the beyond.  I know there is food,

sex, music, books, sleep, art, movies, friends, talk, love.

Please tell me that’s enough. Just once, pay a little visit.

Tell me what I need to know before you go.

 

Diane Burns's "Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question" (Terence Winch)

 

I can't remember when I first encountered this poem.  I know I stumbled on it accidently, I think while doing some on-line research during my days as an employee of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.  We had launched a poetry feature called "Pulling Down the Clouds"  for our membership magazine, and I was always on the lookout for interesting Native work to run as the focus of the feature.  

I knew immediately I wanted this poem in the magazine.  I loved its directness, its snarly, unapologetic, in-your-face attitude. Its completely sophisticated, contemporary use of language.  This was not work that catered to white assumptions and stereotypes: just the opposite, in fact.  Hers is a complex voice in which humor, bitterness, and hipness all coexist in service to the poem. This was a voice like that of many of my Indian friends and colleagues, but one rarely heard by the non-Native world (at least beyond the pages of a Sherman Alexie book).     

Further investigation revealed that the poem was written in 1989 and that Diane Burns, a Lac Courte Oreilles/Chemeheuvi, was born in 1957 and had passed away in 2006. She "first emerged," we told our readers, "as a powerful literary voice in the 1970s working as a poet and model in New York City. Burns’s first and only book of poetry, Riding the One-Eyed Ford (Contact II Publications, 1981), further established her reputation as a unique talent by challenging Native American stereotypes through sharp wit and honesty. In the 1980s, Burns joined a circle of poets and writers in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, reading her work at the renowned Bowery Poetry Club and Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery." 

________________________

Sure You Can Ask Me A Personal Question

How do you do?
No, I am not Chinese.
No, not Spanish.
No, I am American Indian, Native American.

No, not from India.
No, not Apache
No, not Navajo.
No, not Sioux.
No, we are not extinct.
Yes, Indian.

Oh?
So that's where you got those high cheekbones.
Your great grandmother, huh?
An Indian Princess, huh?
Hair down to there?
Let me guess. Cherokee?

Oh, so you've had an Indian friend?
That close?

Oh, so you've had an Indian lover?
That tight?

Oh, so you've had an Indian servant?
That much?

Yeah, it was awful what you guys did to us.
It's real decent of you to apologize.
No, I don't know where you can get peyote.
No, I don't know where you can get Navajo rugs real cheap.
No, I didn't make this. I bought it at Bloomingdales.

Thank you. I like your hair too.
I don't know if anyone knows whether or not Cher
is really Indian.
No, I didn't make it rain tonight.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Spirituality.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Spirituality. Uh-huh. Mother
Earth. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Spirituality.

No, I didn't major in archery.
Yeah, a lot of us drink too much.
Some of us can't drink enough.

This ain't no stoic look.
This is my face.
__________________

For more information on Burns, check out this obituary. I don't know if this is Burns herself reading the poem in this clip, but perhaps someone else out there would know.