Poetry
amherst and boston
http://www.umass.edu/umpress/juniper“Intricately
plotted,
sometimes
fabulist...
[this is]
imaginative
work that
shows how
much women
deserve better
plots.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS“A vividly
unforgettable
memoir of
longing and
discovery.
This one will
haunt me for
some time.”
—DINTY W. MOORE“This is a
novel of
tremendous
emotional
complexity...
The language
is lush, and
the wound
deep and
abiding.”
—NOY HOLLANDJerome Ellison Murphy is a poet and critic in New York City.
radar: an alertness to tropes,” Long Soldier says. “There’s a kind of lexicon that’s
familiar to Native writing, and we can talk about that: we can say, this feels very
familiar—so what can we do to tilt this a bit or refresh it?”
Apocalypse then and now
One trope Native poets feel wary of is the visceral connection to landscape, which
has often been reduced by a colonizing gaze into a savage or unsophisticated trait—a
fate the English pastoral tradition avoided, Erdrich says. While eco-poetics may be
fashionable given contemporary awareness of environmental crisis, the mainstream
is playing a game of catchup compared with Native poets.
“The apocalypse was in 1492 for us,” Pico says. “So, who better to look to than to
those who have survived their own end of days? There’s a resilience there that I think
and hope people want to listen to.”
Pico’s Feed (Tin House) implicitly acknowledges the hazards of nature writing for
a Native poet. He built the collection around a commission for work that could
accompany a walk through Manhattan’s High Line park, and section breaks correspond
to the appearances of the garden’s prominent plants.
“With [2017’s] Nature Poem , I was so aware of and
grappling with how I was being read and inter-
preted,” Pico says, “and then all these white ladies
would be on my Facebook wall posting a picture of a
redwood forest—like, thanks? Completely counter
to the message. Which wasn’t even subtextual. But
Feed says: read me however you want to. This isn’t
going to trouble me at night.”
Pico’s newfound acceptance is evident in Feed ’s
joyful sense of wordplay and humor, which he credits
to his immediate family and also to the clowning
insults on the Viejas reservation of his childhood,
both of which, he says, “fermented” his trademark
gallows humor.
Similarly, the wit and wordplay in Erdrich’s Little Big Bully (Penguin Books, Oct.)
is informed by Ojibwe, which she calls a “language of verbs,” while the poem’s
speakers erase false divisions between personal and political concerns. Embracing a
level of vulnerability new in her work, the collection “is about the mechanisms we
internalize that allow us to be in abusive situations and to fight through abuse,” she
says. “I think of us all as abused, in some way, by a colonial system we’re all still
struggling with, so I hope it’s a ladder for folks to see a way out of a bad spot.” Poems
such as “If I Gave You a Last Lesson” express concerns about the environment with
the same urgency as they share personal histories, asking, Erdrich says, “how to live
with the hurt of being human.”
It’s a pain that Grundstrom-Whitney feels keenly. “I feel hurt when I see our Earth
disrespected in such a way,” says the poet, who, in “Thin White Bears,” has ursine
voices speak directly to humanity about the catastrophic damage to their habitat.
“This theme is a primary focus for me; I’m an activist with water rights, and it’s active
in my writing. I can’t understand: what are we thinking?”
Yet many Native poets share a sense of optimism as barriers continue to be broken.
Erdrich cites a recent study finding that while most Americans do not know any
Native Americans well, seeing relatable, modern depictions can foster understanding.
Those seeking an introduction will find it in the poetic speech of more than 500
indigenous nations. ■