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"I can hardly be alone in the fascination I have for Antigone, as who would not be? The daughter (and younger sister) of Oedipus, she supports the blinded ex-Rex to the end, and she is more steadfast than her sister, more valiant than her brothers. She plays a major part in Oedipus at Colonus, the second play in the Oedipus cycle of Sophocles, and is the title character of the third. One reason for her appeal: she is the incarnation of the spirit of resistance to tyranny and authority. Defying the state to uphold a moral principle that transcends politics, she gives up her life for her belief, and the prince who loves her kills himself in despair." (DL)
For this week's prompt, we will be visiting a hero of our classical past, creating an acrostic poem in the form of her name: Antigone. Much has been written about her, but as with anything in the literary canon, there is always something new to be said, and I can't wait to see what the participants of Next Line, Please will come up with!
Visit the American Scholar's page to read the rest of Mr. Lehman's excellent post, and to enter your candidate.
Virginia Valenzuela
Matria
Alexandra Lytton Regalado
Black Lawrence Press, 2017
Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s debut poetry collection, Matria, examines the prodigies constellated between motherhood and motherland, between English and Spanish, between the United States and El Salvador, between the self and a selfless apprehension of suffering in the world. Regalado’s finely-wrought poems roar in a language haunted equally by “la Carabela de Colon,” “piramide of moreno kewpies / y los hijos de Hernán,” and the cul-de-sacs of the American suburbs where a family becomes “a hallway / of closed doors.” Matria ranges across geographic, cultural, and temporal borders, offering a complicated vision of North and Central American life at the end of one century and at the beginning of another. Like the Lotería cantor’s riddle in “Salvadoran Road Bingo,” Regalado’s words remind us: “Day after day, our fingers in the wounds—here it is, touch it, there is the proof—surviving is what we do best.” Matria, however, is about much more than survival; it is fundamentally a book about how “the body elaborates its ministry” and how ordinary cells might become a vessel of grace, “rooted in / the things unknown but longed for still.”
“La Mesa,” perhaps Matria’s central poem, writes through Carolyn Forché’s “The Colonel,” broadening the scope of the original poem to explore the class and power dynamics of Salvadoran life in the post-civil war era. Regalado’s poem begins by addressing and echoing Forché: “Yes, what you’ve written is true.” The poem then pans out, past the sack of severed ears, past the death squads of the 1980s, past the stories of the ex-guerilla leader turned president, through sandbagged streets where divisions are as transparent and unbreakable as the bulletproof glass of an SUV. The bleak reportorial heft of Forché’s poem, strikingly counterbalanced by the lyricism of its prose, is replaced by a simple urgency at the heart of “La Mesa”: a mother trying to explain her homeland, her life, to her son. This relationship between mother and son provides the subject matter for one of the most moving poems in Matria, “The T'ai Chi of Putting a Sleeping Child to Bed,” which reads:
In the lull of evening, your son nested in your arms
becomes heavier and with a sigh his body
sloughs off its weight like an anchor into deep sleep,
until his small breath is the only thing that exists.
And as you move the slow dance through the dim hall
to his bedroom and bow down to deliver his sleeping form,
arms parting, each muscle defining its arc and release—
you remember the feeling of childhood,
traveling beneath a full moon,
your mother's unmistakable laugh, a field of wild grass,
windows open and the night rushing in
as headlights trace wands of light across your face—
there was a narrative you were braiding,
meanings you wanted to pluck from the air,
but the touch of a hand eased it from your brow
and with each stroke you waded further
into the certainty of knowing your sleeping form
would be ushered by good and true arms
into the calm ocean that is your bed.
Ultimately, Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s Matria transcends the narratives it braids together and the meanings it plucks from the air; like all good poetry it does more than say and mean. It cups your face and runs its hand across your brow. It touches. It gently directs your gaze. It allows you this ocean, this dreaming.
Dante Di Stefano is the author of two poetry collections: Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016) and Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, forthcoming 2019). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for the DIALOGIST. Along with María Isabel Alvarez, he is the co-editor of Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump's America, forthcoming from NYQ Books.
(Editors' note: When Michael Lally wrote about this film on facebook, he touched off a lively discussion among other fans. It's worth reproducing here. If you've never seen this movie, you have a wonderful experience to look forward to; if you haven't seen in it a long time, watch it again. It's terrific for all the reasons that Michael expresses so well. What do you think?)
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES came out when I was four. I saw it at our local movie theater with my older sisters, who were forced to drag me along with them on Sunday afternoons after we had "the big dinner" and my father took his weekly nap and us three youngest were sent to the flickers.
I have seen it many many times since, and though I don't make many lists since the brain operation ended that lifelong compulsion, this movie was always one of my top ten and in recent years' viewings I've decided it's my favorite movie of all.
Watching it each year, on its annual screening on TCM around Veterans Day, despite some dated bits in some scenes, this story of three World War Two veterans returning home after the war has only grown more relevant and prescient and fulfilling.
The female leads especially impress. Myrna Loy's performance should be the template for anyone ever wanting to act in a movie. She can play poignancy, romance, wisdom, comedy, and more with only the turn of a shoulder, or pause in a step, or slight upturn of an eye. For me Loy is the quintessence of screen acting skill.
And Teresa Wright, from my home town but graduated and gone before I was born, is always a delight to watch on screen, her emotional range vast as well. Virginia Mayo, playing the bad girl, as she often did, gives maybe her best performance, too. And the male leads keep up with them and anchor the story with their postwar inner demons.
I could go on, but suffice it to say THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES is a classic Hollywood masterpiece that still lives up to its original worthiness.
Comments from facebook:
Editor's note: This is the sixth in a series about the Todos Santos Writers Workshop, a new under-the-radar program that flourishes in Todos Santos, Mexico. Find posts one through five here. sdl
I stayed at the exquisite Hotelito, which is ten-minute walk down a sandy road to the workshop’s HQ at Casa Dracula. Zipping my sweater against the cool morning air prepares me for the walk that allows me to gather my thoughts on current work. It’s also the final procrastination for my ADD-addled brain - look! Flora! Fauna! - before I get down to the business at hand. The sloppy trek over the uneven terrain mirrors my inner landscape, wild and rolling, until, suddenly, both are smooth and solid, ready.
Inviting thoughts lurking beneath the din, freed now, competing to be acknowledged, maybe captured, we’ll see:
Learn Spanish like a native
Sombrero, casita, amigo
And next time, don’t wear black shoes
Jacinto, playa, pescadero
Because the white dust from the road
Blanco, calle, Tortuga
Coats them like sugar on buñuelos.
Jabon, derecho, mañana
Decoding an inner exquisite puzzle
Fabuloso, arropas, muertos
Confounding and familiar
huevos, curioso, puerta
When a truck whose passengers, a baby and a dog,
bambino, Huichol, pero
Regard me, and would wave if they could.
baja, baile, Pueblo Magico
The sand then settles
Tranquilo, la picero, libreta
Giving way to asphalt
Esplendido, inspiración
Orange flowers trumpeting my poised readiness.
Hola, Casa Grande, llegué
Sue Scarlett Montgomery has lived in NYC for 36 years and works as a writer, filmmaker or musician, depending on the day.
It’s Johnny Mercer’s birthday
from Natchez to Mobile
in the cool cool cool of the evening
very cool with Barbara Lea
singing Marian McPartland playing
the greatest revenge songs of all time
hooray and hallelujah
you had it comin’ to ya
while I clap from a front row seat
with a bottle of Rodenbach
Alexander red ale from Belgium
with cherries and “Tangerine” in
the background in Double Indemnity
when Stanwyck and MacMurray are finished
he had a feel for the lingo, “Jeepers Creepers”
as Bing Crosby sang it on my eighth birthday
in 1956 I just played it three straight times
and an all-American sense of humor what does
Jonah say in the belly of the whale he says man
we better accentuate the positive that’s it
happy birthday and thanks for the cheer
I hope you didn’t mind my bending your ear
-- David Lehman (2000; from The Evening Sun, 2003)
Harold Arlen wrote the music, and Johnny Mercer the words, for that great 1945 hit, "Accentuate the Positive."
Friday at six, martinis straight up with olives. Plymouth or Hendricks. Tanqueray for JA; Bombay for Jim Tate ("lower proof so I can drink more of them"). A couple of eye drop's worth of dry vermouth, preferably Noilly Prat. Mucho hielo. Shake vigorously in a pickle jar. Yes, I know that shaking as opposed to stirring risks "bruising" the gin, and also that you slightly dilute the end product, and frankly my dear I don't give a damn. I like drinking the thing in a y-shaped glass with a floating island of chipped ice on top.
And then we talk.
Ashbery walks in, sees me, sidles up, whispers in my ear, "I hear that John Ashbery is at this party."
Marshall McLuhan comes over and says that Obama is the "coolest" US president since JFK. The "hot" presidents were LBJ, Nixon, and Clinton. Carter was neutral. Reagan was "warm." W was mildly cool but only in relation to Al Gore in earth-tone garb.
Woody Allen looks down at the floor as he plays Cole Porter on his clarinet. He is really a very modest fellow.
Kim Novak doesn't have to act. All she has to do is stand there. Ditto Robert Taylor.
The waiter brings over a tray full of Algonquin cocktails. Since I have no pineapple juice, freshly pressed or otherwise, I have to substitute grapefruit juice, and the rye runs out so I use Canadian Club in honor of Don Draper, as follows: one and a half jiggers whiskey, one jigger Noilly Prat dry vermouth, one jigger of grapefruit juice, times two, shaken. "Delicious," Stacey says.
Judy Garland sings: "Our love affair will be such fun, / We'll be the envy of everyone. / Those famous lovers we'll make them forget / From Adam and Eve to Scarlett and Rhett." Lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Roger Edens.
Jack Benny says "I'm thinking" after a long pause following the menacing question, "your money or your life?"
John Ashbery says that "Jack Benny was my role model."
Jack Benny reminds us that he was born on Valentine's Day. I give him a copy of Self-Portrait in a Coinvex Mirror. He says, "I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either."
In the works are three doctoral dissertations on JA in relation to Mr. Benny's radio show. "Anyone who would understand Ashbery's poetry had better listen to the radio shows of the early 1940s," says Professor McGuffin with the authority of Jacques Barzun on the subject of baseball.
I just thought of a skit featuring Danny Kaye and Bob Hope -- an abbreviated version of Kafka's The Trial, with Kaye in the lead role. Kaye says he has goine from being Davi Kaminsky in Brooklyn to Josef K. in Prague via the dancing feet, sweet voice, and comic brilliance of the greatest of all Borscht Belt geniuses. Kaye say he is looking for justice and Hope says he is looking for a war to visit. One of them will have to wait for a long time. Thanks for the memory, Bob. You don't deserve to be dismissed, ignored or recalled with a patronizing sneer, but that's the Zeitgeist for you.
Ashbery says he and Frank O'Hara saw On the Town, the movie, one holiday night and they loved it so much they went on to walk to the Brooklyn Bridge and strill across it. I love it, too, though I can't understand why they left out some of the greatest Bernstein songs ("Some Other Time," "Lucky To Be Me," "Lonely Town") and it's a shame they changed "a helluva town" to "a wonderful town," the town being New York City.
Joni James sings "As Time Goes By." Here's to you, Herman Hupfeld, alias Dodie (to his friends), who wrote both the words and the music. "Moonlight and love songs never out of date, hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate / Woman needs man and must have his mate."
Vivien Leigh says "tomorrow is another day."
And we're all here to toast you, J. A. . -- DL
[From the Archives, originally posted September 28, 2012, revised July 28, 2017]
In anticipation of Tupelo Press’s forthcoming anthology project, Native Voices, I’m pleased to continue a series of posts honoring Indigenous poetry from North America.
But first, I’d like to say a few words about this exciting and necessary anthology. Tupelo Press is eager to celebrate a more complete version of the story we tell—about ourselves, our past, and what is possible in language. In this book, the first of its kind, every poet will present new poems, as well as an original essay, and a selection of resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists. Our anthology is intended to embody the dynamic and ongoing conversations that take place in Indigenous poetry through writerly craft across generational, geographic, and stylistic divides.
With that in mind, I'm thrilled to introduce one of our poets, Deborah Miranda. An enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of California, poet Deborah Miranda was born in Los Angeles to an Esselen/Chumash father and a mother of French ancestry. She grew up in Washington State, earning a BS in teaching moderate special-needs children from Wheelock College in 1983 and an MA and PhD in English from the University of Washington. Miranda’s collections of poetry include Raised by Humans (2015); Indian Cartography: Poems (1999), winner of the Diane Decorah Memorial First Book Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas; and The Zen of La Llorona (2005), nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Miranda also received the 2000 Writer of the Year Award for Poetry from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Her mixed-genre collection Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2013) won a Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher's Association and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Award. It is a delight to feature her poem, "Acorn." Enjoy!
Acorn
That sound inside you is a sacred sound:
heartbeat of a seed, eager to emerge.
That sound inside you is an urgent sound:
life’s sharp, percussive pulse.
That sound inside you is the future,
rattling a polished brown shell
shaped like a goddess, or a breast.
You are what Jesus meant when he said
the meek shall inherit the Earth. You
are what Hillel had in mind when he said,
this is the whole Torah. You are the secret
that begs to be told, a treasure whispering
find me. You are the fingerprint of the Creator
left behind in soft red clay, hardening in sun.
You are the sleek amulet snug in the palm
of my hand; you are the ripe mother of nations.
From your flesh comes invention of all words
for holiness, sacred, celebration, awe.
Palatsa, little rattle, you hold time in your belly –
round and full and kicking its way into life.
For more information about the anthology, our mission, and how you can help, please visit our Kickstarter page.
In anticipation of Tupelo Press’s forthcoming anthology project, Native Voices, I’m pleased to continue a series of posts honoring Indigenous poetry from North America.
But first, I’d like to say a few words about this exciting and necessary anthology. Tupelo Press is eager to celebrate a more complete version of the story we tell—about ourselves, our past, and what is possible in language. In this book, the first of its kind, every poet will present new poems, as well as an original essay, and a selection of resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists. Our anthology is intended to embody the dynamic and ongoing conversations that take place in Indigenous poetry through writerly craft across generational, geographic, and stylistic divides.
With that in mind, it is an honor and a delight to introduce one of our poets, Sammie Bordeaux-Seeger. Sammie Bordeaux-Seeger is a Sicangu Lakota from Rosebud, South Dakota. She writes and teaches at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Reservation. Here is a poem forthcoming in the anthology, entitled "1900." Enjoy!
1900
Great grandma as a little girl holds the quilt in which she is buried.
They had only had fabric for dresses and quilts a few years at that point,
only ten years past the ‘Knee.
Little girls knew then any wildness could be punished with bullets,
the way we knew fear of spanking or The Big Owl,
who would come and take us in our sleep
to the top of the water tower, shove us off.
Grandma warned us every night before bed,
The Big Owl is going to come and take your bottles.
And five year old me would come home from Headstart,
make a double batch of chocolate milk for my little brother
in the cheap plastic bottles. Screw on the tops,
put ourselves down for a nap.
In 1900 there was only the breast, the milk,
the dead mother the child slipped next to for suckle.
That sigh.
For more information about the anthology, our mission, and how you can help, please visit our Kickstarter page.
Trapped on a long drive with an atheist
I closed my eyes and sought refuge in
My earliest erotic fantasies of capture
By an Apache warrior maiden, cruel
At first but then merely unpredictable.
As the atheist droned on the scent of
Formaldehyde characteristic of his
Persuasion suffused the vehicle and
Obligated me to explain this aroma
To the warrior maiden who fiercely
Demanded ‘What’s that awful smell?’
‘Formaldehyde,’ I answered and
With a shrill war-whoop she bared
Her breasts and pounced on me.
Dean Rader publishes widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and visual/popular culture. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His recent collection, Landscape Portrait Figure Form, (Omnidawn Chapbook Series 2014) was named by the Barnes & Noble Review as one of the Best Books of Poetry of the year. In 2016, he won the Common Good Books Prize (judged by Garrison Keillor) and in 2015 was the recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award (judged by Stephen Burt). He has also written scholarly books, including Engaged Resistance: Contemporary American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI (University of Texas Press, 2011), which won the Beatrice Medicine Award for Excellence in American Indian Scholarship and Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry(University of Arizona Press, 2001, edited with Janice Gould). He is a professor at the University of San Francisco. For more information, visit his website.
An Indigenous daughter of the West, CMarie Fuhrman was born in Southwest Colorado and has lived in various rural towns of states all along the Rocky Mountains. She has earned degrees in Exercise Physiology, English and American Indian Studies and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Idaho where she co-teaches Native Literature and Ethnic Studies classes and is associate poetry editor for Fugue. Cindy’s poetry has been featured in Broadsided Press’s NoDapl compilation, two anthologies, and several literary journals including Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, and Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art. She is recipient of the Burns Award for poetry and multiple fellowships. Her current project, The Problem of My Body, focuses on the forced sterilization of Native women. CMarie divides her time between Moscow and McCall, Idaho.
In anticipation of Tupelo Press's forthcoming Native Voices anthology, I'm pleased to introduce a conversation with our co-editors about what the book makes possible in the classroom.
KMD: You are all both accomplished educators, with positions at such colleges as the University of San Francisco, University of Idaho, and many others. I’d love to hear more about your experiences teaching poetry. What’s missing from contemporary writing programs and the conversations that take place within them?
DR: I think there are two answers to your question. One answer involves what gets taught to undergraduates in terms of Indigenous poetry. This includes classes to both English majors and--in some ways more importantly--to non-English majors. For example, at USF we have a very popular class called “Native American Literature and Film” which fulfills the university’s literature core requirement. It is designed for non-English majors and will be, for most students in the class, the only literature class they take in college. Increasingly, there are courses like this all over the country. And they are popular. Professors who teach these classes are often overworked and perhaps even under-prepared--especially for poetry. This anthology will help them teach contemporary Indigenous poetry in an inclusive way that highlights not just the thematics of poetic creation but its forms as well.
I also think more and more students are pursuing graduate studies in Native literatures. We definitely need more students--ideally more Indigenous students--getting PhDs in literature, English, AIS, and American studies. What has been missing for these students is a current anthology of Indigenous poetics that arms them to to graduate level work in Native poetries.
The second issue is about poets themselves and what gets taught in graduate creative writing programs. I think recent books by Natalie Diaz and Layli Long Soldier might get taught in MFA programs, but there is a vast canon of Indigenous American poetry that does not get taught in graduate programs because graduate writing courses tend to focus on craft, and for years readers have been taught to read books by Native writers through the lens of theme or context or culture. This anthology helps correct that.
CF: I agree with everything that Dean said. As a teacher of Native Lit and advisor for our Universities IKEEP (Indigenous Knowledge for Effective Education Program) I am responsible for teaching Natives and non-Natives about Indigenous literature. I often teach classes for Native students only, but I have taught mixed classes as well. What I have found in teaching both is that Natives would have to learn about Indigenous writing from a non-Native perspective and non-Natives were never given the chance to hear about craft or the impetus for a poem or story from the Native writer. Often I would invite, via Skype or classroom visit, the writers and poets to talk to the students themselves, but this is not always feasible. It is my hope that a collection like this one might be able to bring those voices into the classroom directly. This way, both student and teacher may gain a better perspective and understanding of Native writing.
KMD: In what ways is pedagogy politically charged? Can our decisions as teachers create a more inclusive and just artistic community?
DR: A great part of teaching is related to 1) knowledge and 2) comfort. Most poets and professors who teach did not, themselves, read poetry by Native writers in college or graduate school. So, they are less likely to teach it now. I think many professors shy away from teaching, say, Wendy Rose poems or Simon Ortiz poems or LeAnne Howe poems because they don’t know much about tribal histories or even larger Native histories. Furthermore, Native issues are not forefront in American culture right now the way African American and Chicano/a issues are. So, the political urgency of Black Lives Matter or the immigration debate may, for some, feel exigent. I would argue though American minority issues, the marginalization of people of color, and the absence of Natives from popular and political culture, and the larger issues of class make teaching works by Native writers paramount at this moment in history.
KMD: What new directions do you hope that this anthology opens up within our thinking about poetry, literary tradition, and aesthetics more generally?
DR: I hope this anthology encourages writers and professors to think about Indigeous poetry in terms of craft. I really hope our book shifts the lens a little bit so that people do not turn to Native poetry just to “learn about Indians” (as I heard someone say not long ago) but to learn about art. What if readers start thinking about Native poetry the way they think about Native painting and pottery--as modes of aesthetic production, as vibrant acts of creation.
CF: I can’t say this any better.
KMD: Tell us about one particular contribution from the anthology that you would be excited to teach. How would you utilize this particular work in the classroom?
CF: I am excited to teach work by Nimiipuu poet Michael Wasson. First, because he is from the Nez Perce tribe which is located here in Idaho, not far from the University. Many of our students are Nez Perce and I think they would be honored and inspired to hear from one of their own. Not to mention, Michael’s work is outstanding. His poems are complex, multi-layered, and extremely poignant. I am excited to bring poets into the classroom that reflect my students.
KMD: Given the anthology’s unique structure, what does this book make possible within the context of writing programs? For writing communities more generally?
DR: The book’s combination of poetry and craft are going to be unique. I also like the idea that our book foregrounds influential poetic texts. This highlights the ways in which poetry is a kind of collaboration, or at the very least a conversation. It also helps illustrate direct influences and echoes.
CF: Generations and a sense of community are very important to Native people. This book is way of honoring our teacher, our elders, and inspiring our children to write their truths as well.
Because this book is comprised of writing from poets all over the US (including Alaska and Hawaii) it gives a more complete picture of the Native American experience, particularly the contemporary experience while honoring the past. Though this book is not meant to be a historical work, it does help to fill the gaps in both the current events and the overlooked history of Native people in the U.S.
For more information about our anthology, our mission, and how you can bring this book to life, please visit our Kickstarter page.
Just when I think I've learned all the tricks up his sleeve, the ever impressive, devilishly clever David Lehman finds a way to wow us, yet again! In this week's installment of Next Line, Please, Mr. Lehman chooses the best of the best autumn haikus from a ground-breaking, record-setting three hundred and eighty-three submissions and comments. But he doesn't stop there. Mr. Lehman also ventures to write the entire post in haikus, from the introductory comments to the promise of another prompt next week.
Here is a taste of some seasonally spiced haikus:
Michael C. Rush
The fog at dawn asks
the falling leaves leaving fall
to wait for winter.
Angela Ball
"Trees Along Highway 49 between Jackson and Hattiesburg"
Monomania
of pines, a long shot of gold,
a headdress of red.
Paul Michelsen
"America in Fall"
Morning has seized us
Orchards flung out on the land
Backward into light
And lastly, a translation of Basho's most famous haiku:
David Lehman
Pond
Frog
Splash!
Visit the American Scholar's page to read more or to enter into the next competition!
Virginia Valenzuela
In anticipation of Tupelo Press’s forthcoming anthology project, Native Voices, I’m pleased to continue a series of posts honoring Indigenous poetry from North America.
But first, I’d like to say a few words about this exciting and necessary anthology. Tupelo Press is eager to celebrate a more complete version of the story we tell—about ourselves, our past, and what is possible in language. In this book, the first of its kind, every poet will present new poems, as well as an original essay, and a selection of resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists. Our anthology is intended to embody the dynamic and ongoing conversations that take place in Indigenous poetry through writerly craft across generational, geographic, and stylistic divides.
It's an honor and a delight to introduce one of our contributors, Ernestine Hayes. Alaska Writer Laureate and University of Alaska Southeast Associate Professor Ernestine Hayes belongs to the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Tlingit nation. Her first book, Blonde Indian, an Alaska Native Memoir, received an American Book Award and an Honoring Alaska Indigenous Literature (HAIL) Award, was named Native America Calling Book of the Month, and was finalist for the Kiriyama Prize and PEN Nonfiction Award. Blonde Indian was the inaugural selection for Alaska Reads, a program launched by her predecessor, Writer Laureate Frank Soos. Her works have appeared in Studies in American Indian Literature, Yellow Medicine Review, Cambridge History of Western American Literature, and other forums. Her poem “The Spoken Forest” is installed at Totem Bight State Park, and her comments on Indigenous identity are installed in the Alaska State Museum. Her latest book, The Tao of Raven, weaves narratives and reflection in the context of “Raven and the Box of Daylight.” We're thrilled to feature her hybrid text, "Shapeshifters." Enjoy!
Shapeshifters
My grandmother told me that if I saw myself on the street, I should approach and embrace the familiar shape. Her exact instructions were “Saankalyek’t, walk up and hug yourself.” The beings we might see, she explained, can present themselves in the form of those who see them.
I spent childhood summers at Hawk Inlet on the island whose name is Xootsnoowoo. I explored the forest and the beach while my grandmother and other Tlingit women worked in the cannery increasing the wealth of white man colonizers. On late evenings, shadows crept along the boardwalk between two rows of dark red cabins. Worn-down women unwrapped bandanas that had protected their hair from the raw smell of wealth sucked from the ocean, the smell of profit now headed into the pockets of white men through tins of salmon that should rather have been smoked and dried and baked and boiled on Tlingit fires. Grandmothers and aunties unpinned their now-uncovered waist-length graying hair and sat around kerosene lamps, gossiping and laughing and reminding little girls to stay inside.
Beings could be heard just outside the walls. As soon as someone sensed their nameless movement, the beings began to whisper like willow branches, whimper like dogs that still walked on four legs, grumble like wandering bears beguiled by salmon-soaked scarves. Grandmothers warned little girls that these beings might look like cousins or uncles or even themselves. There would seem no reason to suspect those beings, grandmothers instructed, but anyone who walked away with them might never come back. Anyone who did come back would not come back right away. Anyone who came back would be avoided by their loved ones. Anyone who managed to return would receive from their loved ones no more than a cautious embrace.
All the truths my grandmother declared are as plain as the world.
* * *
The Woman Who Married a Bear
“The Woman Who Married the Bear” is among the ancient stories translated in Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors, Tlingit Oral Narratives, one text in a landmark series edited and translated by Nora Marks Dauenhauer and her husband Richard Dauenhauer. The story tells of a woman who walked away with a being who presented himself to her as a handsome young man. When she came back, after giving birth, after witnessing her husband’s death, after being avoided by her loved ones, she wrapped herself in her husband’s skin and shapeshifted into a bear. Or perhaps she was a bear who had shapeshifted into human form until she covered herself with her real nature. Or perhaps she was both. Bear children slip from their mother’s womb into a pool of damp hot breath and nose themselves toward her leaking nipple, grumbling, whispering, uncaring. They don’t think to ask if they are bear, if they are human, when they will kill, when they will be killed. They suckle. They sleep.
When that woman, that bear woman, wrapped herself in her true nature, she might have raised up, she might have called for her children to follow. Her bear children, she might have called them to follow her into the forest. Eagle, bear, wolf, human: We all share life.
All the truths my grandmother declared are as plain as the world.
* * *
Land otter people
It was once said that land otter people can make themselves look like any thing of beauty. It was once believed that a sharp bite on the hand of a land otter man will reveal his nature. But no one now remembers the sweet taste of his shifted skin – skin that is flavored like blueberry blossoms salted with a vagrant’s tear. And few remain alive who thrill at a suggestion of his whereabouts. Few remain alive who are not fooled by the whisper of a willow branch. He knows he will die when no one is left to embrace him.
He fades
He fades
He walks past
Becomes invisible
He has not prevailed against those merciless gates
He prepares for death
Still longing for the sting of a bitten hand
All the truths my grandmother declared are as plain as the world.
* * *
Nora Dauenhauer begins her widely anthologized poem “How to Make Good Baked Salmon from the River” with these words:
It’s best made in dry-fish camp on a beach by a
Fish stream on sticks over an open fire, or during
Fishing, or during cannery season.
In this case, we’ll make it in the city baked in
An electric oven on a black fry pan.
Next, Dauenhauer instructs readers on the proper way to prepare fresh salmon, presenting images that rise from our place – alder wood, skunk cabbage leaves, ravens, fresh berries – followed by contemporary images that continue the tradition – paper plates, plastic forks, coffee and beer. With elegant craft, Dauenhauer subtly teaches us that traditions are not confined to the past, but are living, breathing, alive. This lesson is true for baking salmon, for telling stories, and for all the beliefs we cautiously embrace.
All the truths my grandmother declared are as plain as the world.
* * *
How to Make Good Baked Salmon from the River
By Nora Dauenhauer
It's best made in dry-fish camp on a beach by a
fish stream on sticks over an open fire, or during
fishing, or during cannery season.
In this case, we'll make it in the city baked in
an electric oven on a black fry pan.
INGREDIENTS
Barbecue sticks of alder wood.
In this case, the oven will do.
Salmon: River salmon, current supermarket cost
$4.99 a pound.
In this case, salmon poached from river.
Seal oil or olachen oil.
In this case, butter or Wesson oil, if available.
DIRECTIONS
To butcher, split head up the jaw. Cut through,
remove gills. Split from throat down the belly.
Gut, but make sure you toss all to the seagulls and
the ravens because they're your kin, and make sure
you speak to them while you're feeding them.
Then split down along the back bone and through
the skin. Enjoy how nice it looks when it's split.
Push stake through flesh and skin like pushing
a needle through cloth, so that it hangs on stakes
while cooking over fire made from alder wood.
Then sit around and watch the slime on the salmon
begin to dry out. Notice how red the flesh is,
and how silvery the skin looks. Watch and listen
to the grease crackle, and smell its delicious
aroma drifting around on a breeze.
Mash some fresh berries to go along for dessert.
Pour seal oil in with a little water. Set aside.
In this case, put the poached salmon in a fry pan.
Smell how good it smells while it's cooking,
because it's soooooooo important.
Cut up an onion. Put in a small dish. Notice how
nice this smells too and how good it will taste.
Cook a pot of rice to go along with salmon. Find
some soy sauce to put on rice, maybe borrow some.
In this case, think about how nice the berries would
have been after the salmon, but open a can of fruit
cocktail instead.
Then go out by the cool stream and get some skunk
cabbage, because it's biodegradable, to serve the
salmon from. Before you take back the skunk cabbage
you can make a cup out of one to drink from the
cool stream.
In this case, plastic forks paper plates and cups will do, and
drink cool water from the faucet.
TO SERVE
After smelling smoke and fish and watching the
cooking, smelling the skunk cabbage and the berries
mixed with seal oil, when the salmon is done, put
the salmon on stakes on the skunk cabbage and pour
some seal oil over it and watch the oil run into
the nice cooked flakey flesh which has now turned
pink.
Shoo mosquitoes off the salmon, and shoo the ravens
away, but don't insult them because the mosquitoes
are known to be the ashes of the cannibal giant,
and Raven is known to take off with just about
anything.
In this case, dish out on paper plates from fry pan.
Serve to all relatives and friends you have invited
to the barbecue and those who love it.
And think how good it is that we have good spirits
that still bring salmon and oil.
TO EAT
Everyone knows that you can eat just about every
part of the salmon, so I don't have to tell you
that you start with the head because it's everyone's
favorite. You take it apart bone by bone, but make
sure you don't miss the eyes, the cheeks, the nose,
and the very best part–the jawbone.
You start on the mandible with a glottalized
alveolar fricative action as expressed in the Tlingit
verb als'oos'.
Chew on the tasty, crispy skins before you start
on the bones. Eeeeeeeeeeeee!! How delicious.
Then you start on the body by sucking on the fins
with the same action. Include crispy skins, then
the meat with grease dripping all over it.
Have some cool water from the stream with the salmon.
In this case, water from the faucet will do.
Enjoy how the water tastes sweeter with salmon.
When done, toss the bones to the ravens and
seagulls and mosquitoes, but don't throw them in
the salmon stream because the salmon have spirits
and don't like to see the remains of their kin
among them in the stream.
In this case, put bones in plastic bag to put
in dumpster.
Now settle back to a story telling session, while
someone feeds the fire.
In this case, small talk and jokes with friends
will do while you drink beer. If you shouldn't
drink beer, tea or coffee will do nicely.
Gunalcheesh for coming to my barbecue.
* * *
The Spoken Forest
Brown bear dances in the dark in the dark forest in the night to the remembered melody of a happy song his mother once heard her grandmother hum—the nearly lost memory of a song meant for this time of the night, to take away our grief, to help us laugh again, to set the bear surely to spin beneath the darkly spinning stars.
He knows winter when he sees it when he smells snow making the air fat with promises of sleep he knows he can eat fat that will burn his fires in the night in the dark night and warm his cave of dreams where his breath steams the air that carries our unforgotten songs our unremembered dances our unsaved prayers.
Spruce and hemlock whisper one to another. Our history our histories our story our stories our memory our memories our life our lives who we are what we are how we are where we are spruce and hemlock watch as we hurry to places with no sun no rain no humans they tenderly fold us into their whispers knowing that in the next days in the next generations in the next worlds our stories will be the at.oow they bring out to display to us their opposites when they host memorials for our impeccable purpose.
Land otter man uses his cell phone on the bus
When I look at him I know: This kooshdakaa has wrapped himself as human.
Human, yes. But … different in some way. Different in some ways. In the way his black hair lies flat straight back from his flat wide forehead. In his strict posture, his barrel chest. His always-shined shoes. His surprising, high voice. In the way his lip remembers the adornments his grandmothers wore when they were still those innocent girls before dleitkaa came to tell them they were dirty.
The Spoken Forest
I was thinking about the forest one day
and it came to me—
our stories,
our songs,
our names,
our history,
our memories
are not lost.
All these riches are being kept for us
by our aunties, our uncles,
our grandparents, our relatives—
those namesakes who walk and dance
wearing robes that make them seem like bears
and wolves.
Our loved ones.
Those beings who live in the spoken forest.
They are holding everything for us.
All the truths my grandmother declared are as plain as the world.
Portions of "The Spoken Forest" have appeared in Tidal Echoes and Poems in Place Alaska.
"How to Make Good Baked Salmon from the River" appears in Nora Dauenhauer's book The Droning Shaman.
For more information about our mission, and how you can help, please visit our Kickstarter page.
My friend died and a few days later
In a dream called me on my cell;
‘Hey how are you doing?’ he said.
‘I can’t complain,’ was my reply,
‘And you? How is it being dead?’
A brief silence and he declared,
‘Nobody has to do it, just use
‘Gorilla Glue, man.’ I took this in
And asked. ‘But use Gorilla Glue
For what, old friend? The sundry
‘Household tasks?’ His reply had
Some heat: ‘Use Gorilla Glue, bro,
‘If you know what’s good for you!
‘Gorilla Glue!’ And he was gone.
In anticipation of Tupelo Press’s forthcoming anthology project, Native Voices, I’m pleased to continue a series of posts honoring Indigenous poetry from North America.
But first, I’d like to say a few words about this exciting and necessary anthology. Tupelo Press is eager to celebrate a more complete version of the story we tell—about ourselves, our past, and what is possible in language. In this book, the first of its kind, every poet will present new poems, as well as an original essay, and a selection of resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists. Our anthology is intended to embody the dynamic and ongoing conversations that take place in Indigenous poetry through writerly craft across generational, geographic, and stylistic divides.
I recently had a chance to interview one of our contributors, Ishmael Angaluuk Hope, about his poem, "Canoe Launching into the Gaslit Sea," featured in a previous Best American Poetry post, and forthcoming in the anthology. Ishmael Angaluuk Hope is a Tlingit and Inupiaq storyteller, poet and scholar who lives in Juneau, Alaska. Notable projects includes serving as the lead writer for Kisima Ingitchuna: Never Alone for E-Line Media and the Cook Inlet Tribal Council; and publishing two poetry books under the Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, Courtesans of Flounder Hill and Rock Piles Along the Eddy. He is raising a family of five children with his wife, Lily Hope, a Tlingit weaver.
A Conversation With Ishmael Angaluuk Hope
KMD: Tell us about your first encounter with poetry.
IAH: Both of my parents, the late Elizabeth “Sister” Goodwin Hope, Taliiraq, an Iñupiaq who grew up in Kotzebue, Alaska, and Andrew Hope III, Xhaastánch, a Tlingit born and raised in Sitka, Alaska, were poets. Boy, do I sure miss them. My mother’s book of poems, A Lagoon Is In My Backyard, was, as far as her and her publisher–Ishmael Reed Publishing Company–knew, the first published book of poems by an Inuit, in 1984. Now there are incredible Iñupiaq poets like Joan Kane and dg okpik, among many, to which I have joined ranks with my two books, Courtesans of Flounder Hill and Rock Piles Along the Eddy, by the same publisher of my mother’s book. Ishmael Reed and his wife Carla Blank have been family friends for many decades, and tremendous supporters of my parents’ and my work, along with countless others. So I grew up around it. It was weird growing up in a community where anti-Nativeness was very strong, yet my parents were these respected poets and cultural leaders. I think more than anything the resonance of humanity my parents brought to me, the warmth and love, and joy of creation, led me to poetry.
KMD: Your poem, “Canoe Launching into the Gaslit Sea” reads as a gorgeously rendered imperative, a call to action. In what ways is the practice of poetry political for you as a writer?
IAH: Thanks much for your kind comment. I think we need a very expansive idea of what poetry is, and to be very careful about teaching it in a non-prescriptive, non-proscriptive way. The way I experience poetry is through resonances, vibrations the words carry, which could reflect–yet is not summed up in totality–sound, image, breath, motion, body, atmosphere, and even direct ideas. Though the term I feel is at risk of being overused or misused, I believe very much in bearing witness. So my poems can be quite political in that sense, though I try to stay out of the dichotomous political spectrum that dominates political discourse. I do believe–and more importantly, I have observed–that old Indigenous lifeways can be tremendously healing and can teach people how to truly live in this land. My writing sometimes reflects that insight, but I don’t try to overthink it when I write.
KMD: Your poem also explores - with wit, lyricism and grace - the complexities and contradictions inherent in the idea of community. “We need to band together…” the speaker tells us, “scatter as one.” In what ways does the practice of poetry cultivate a more mindful community?
IAH: Robert Bringhurst had a fine rendering of insight in the spirit of the monk poet Han Shan. At the poem’s end, entitled “Han Shan”, Bringhurst writes,
I am leaving now. Please,
no applause. Those who know how to live
will leave with me
in different directions.
I think I was influenced by that poem with “scatter as one”, though I made it my own. What I try to do is locate meanings, which I feel in my body, and then to write when I feel it resonating. In this case, the community has its own rich spectrum of needs, griefs and joys, and I was meditating on it when writing. I first wrote it to be read aloud at the Indigenous Comic Con in Albuquerque in 2016, run by Lee Francis and his wonderful colleagues. It was a great time, a time for me to support the likes of brilliant Native game developers Elizabeth LaPensée, Allen Turner and Renee Nejo. It was awkward to read it at the panel, to be totally honest, because non-poetry panels are not really set up for that, but they were who I wrote it for and so I am grateful the audience allowed for it.
Poetry, in the broadest sense possible, which to me is something like deep and intense thought, and thought which extends beyond the human world, can remind us of the invisible yet tangible tapestry that connects us. Regarding my sense of poetry, I trace my lineage to the likes of Robert Bringhurst, who wrote that “Poetry, like science, is a way of finding out–by stating perceptively and clearly–what exists and what is going on”; and the great Yup’ik scholar Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, who offered profound insights on Native ways of knowing. Nature makes the most enduring poetry, I feel, because it’s ever-renewing and luminous if left to its own devices. So I think there is something to connecting with the resonances of poetry, which can connect us to other resonances, such as the living human community, to ancestors, to descendants and to the whole world.
KMD: What poets inspire you? Who are you currently reading?
IAH: Robert Bringhurst, the late Nora Dauenhuaer and the late Richard Dauenahuer are some of my most important mentors. They’ve been tremendously supportive, and their insights and writings are urgent and nourishing to me. I think Federico García Lorca is maybe the greatest poet who ever lived, which of course is uncouth to say with such direct valuation! I read whatever Pablo Neruda I can get my hands on, and I think people can spend years seriously studying his work, rather than being relegated to a sort of high school crush for poets! Joy Harjo is a profound supporter of Native writers, and I deeply admire her work as well. I frequently turn to Avdo Međedović’s The Wedding of Smailagić Meho, one of the world’s great epic poems. Though they are not comfortably recognized as poets, I always go back to the great Native American storytellers: Robert Nasruk Cleveland, Catherine Attla, Paul John, Willie Marks and Robert Zuboff, among many others, and even living Elders such as Sequoyah Guess and George Davis, Kaaxwaan Éesh. Out of some of the ones recently published, I enjoy the work of Joan Kane, Ken White, Sherwin Bitsui, Tiffany Midge and Heid Erdrich.
KMD: Your work calls our attention the beauty inherent in the quotidian, “the garlic cloves” and “crumbs” of everyday life. In the poem featured here, you provocatively blur the boundaries between high and low. With that in mind, what nonliterary texts have been influential for your poetics?
IAH: I grew up with comic books. I’ve also recently gotten more into games. I was a narrative designer and script writer for Kisima Ingitchuna: Never Alone, a game co-produced by E-Line Media and Cook Inlet Tribal Council. There’s a tremendous amount of great work being generated by Native comic creators, like Jay Odjick and Arigon Starr, and Native game developers as I mentioned. I also have been getting into standup comedy. Maria Bamford and Todd Barry are golden geniuses. I absolutely love the interplay they do with internal monologue being spoken aloud–linguistically-intact, if that makes sense–with colloquial dialogue and comedic timing.
KMD: What are you currently working on? What can readers look forward to?
IAH: My book, Rock Piles Along the Eddy, was just published in March. Also, I’m doing a wild and crazy long poem right now, under the guidance of Ken White, who has been an astute and helpful mentor, at the Institute of American Indian Arts Low Residency Creative Writing MFA program. This may sound weird for some, but I believe that humans have some sense of sonar intelligence, and it’s important with how we interact with the land, though it’s not like we’re dolphins. It is basic and not really mystical to me, our sense of atmosphere and how we orient ourselves in spaces. I think words carry resonances, and I’m listening for the resonances in the land and waterways, along with my deeply-internal psyche, and seeing what I find. The tentative title is Love Letter to the Future: A Book of the Land in Four Acts. I’m not sure when it would be published, because it has just begun, but it feels incredibly freeing and joyful to write, which I think is a good sign.
For more information about the anthology, our mission, and how you can help bring this project to life, please visit our Kickstarter page.
In anticipation of Tupelo Press’s forthcoming anthology project, Native Voices, I’m pleased to continue a series of posts honoring Indigenous poetry from North America.
But first, I’d like to say a few words about this exciting and necessary anthology. Tupelo Press is eager to celebrate a more complete version of the story we tell—about ourselves, our past, and what is possible in language. In this book, the first of its kind, every poet will present new poems, as well as an original essay, and a selection of resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists. Our anthology is intended to embody the dynamic and ongoing conversations that take place in Indigenous poetry through writerly craft across generational, geographic, and stylistic divides.
With that in mind, I'm thrilled to introduce another one of our talented contributors, Michael Wasson. Michael is the author of This American Ghost (YesYes Books, 2017). His poems appear in American Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, Best New Poets, and Bettering American Poetry. He is nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. I'm pleased to present his poem, "Mourning Ceremony." Enjoy!
Mourning Ceremony
hipe’síweme kaa wáaqo’ ‘ilcwéew’cixnim cilakátki
‘iceyéeyenm wéetesne péetek’ene. They carved and now
Coyote distributed Monster’s body to various lands.
When grief is allowed to us it’s in the stern shape and voice of a man
who walks around ‘n yells at us and his hollering holds our faces
while we are handed polaroid photographs and old portraits
and lip-stained cups with either coffee or red Kool-Aid rings inside
and dirty paintings and ashy ashtrays and almost clean enough pots
and iron skillets and washed pans and jean jackets still glazed
with the scent of sweat ‘n armpits and pine-rubbed flannel coats
and pants so dirty when you glide your hand across ‘em dust slips off
and fades into the blaring gymnasium lights
and cracked and bent glasses frames with a little resin of ear oil
and a smear of dried blood still in the screws and plain moccasins
and porcupine quill roaches ranging from child-size to adult-size
worn out shoes and torn boots and a wristwatch an elderly woman
puts to her ear and keeps it there like a phone and a phone
though we don’t have enough money to buy an answering machine
to record your lost breathing soft into some spooled static
and a collection of tapes and your Black Sabbath and Beatles
and Jimi Hendrix and the Eagles and Led Zeppelin and Credence
Clearwater Revival and the blankets you took with you
when you ended up homeless for a little while and slept along
the Clearwater River and baskets with nothing inside them
and door knobs and rugs and your dirty shirt that had Mickey Mouse
adorned in a headdress and more blankets and letters and notes
and he’s yelling at us that this is the only time we get to mourn for you
for this loss and for this collection of your life that we broadcast
across this throbbing I feel up here in these wooden bleachers
and across the sudden loneliness taking ahold of our burning throats
that you need to hear us and that you are never coming back
that we are weak people who are holding your separated body
in our wrecked arms ‘n hands and on our laps ‘n behind our eyes
and we grip onto these monstrous pieces of you until we break
into this ancient song now flooding the air and shaking the overhead lights
burying you beneath this rush of desperate longing
and face your bright and drawn-out vanishing of ‘ilcwéew’cixnim tim’íne
your sáw’is kaa sayaqi’sníx kiké’t núunim ‘ipsúusx pipísne pawic’asc’asnóoya
and sound our tightening ribs so wide even all the long dead ones can hear
each of our gym-lit bodies bursting and wailing and blooming open.
Grateful acknowledgments to As/Us, where this poem first appeared.
For more information about our mission, and how you can help, please visit our Kickstarter page.
Radio
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman
