New Poets of Native Nations
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or place to come together. The milk in the women’s breasts dried up, infants
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Praise for New Poets of Native Nations
“This twenty-first century of Native poetry is marked by digital singing and storytelling, dislocated relocation, and moments of perception that float like motes in the eyes of Creation. As indigenous peoples, we are always moving and always have been, from Sky to Earth, from East to West, North to South, and back up again. The root of poetry is song-making on lonely dirt roads, or with ears at the apex of sunrise as we listen for something to happen from our singular sound sculptures, for change to happen. That doesn’t change no matter the century or in the measure of time that has no description. Here are twenty-one new (and not-so-new) Native poets, writing in English and sometimes our original languages still listening and translating into language what is given to give back. These twenty-one new poets, like their predecessors, are emerging from the Earth or falling from the Sky, from industrial streets, boarding schools, fast cars, all-night tribal or city dances, MFA programs, and bureaucratic lines. Beauty threads with squalor. This is Earth. What a collection Heid E. Erdrich has made of so many original and fresh Native voices, from so many places, gathered here, right here; it is happening, this new Native Nations poetry.”
—Joy Harjo
“New Poets of Native Nations is an astounding collection of writers whose varied works most readers have not yet witnessed. Much of the poetry reveals the confident and unreserved presence of a hybrid language of poetics that does not usually exist inside the boundaries of our earlier concepts of poetry. ‘Boundaries’ is the key word here, as the writing travels beyond poetic maps of the past. Land and water are contained here, as island and ocean, earth and river, and clouds and grasslands—suddenly and shockingly the grass in the mouth of a trader who had starved the people of food, land, and life. Now, ours is also an environment of new and indecent pesticides, lead-filled waters not revealed to the people drinking it, yellow toxic tainted rivers, all of these new kinds of genocide. As earlier writers held, poetry is a significant method for decolonizing ourselves. Many came together at the momentous event at Standing Rock: such centuries-old struggles to save lands, water, and other elements of our world make the work an intertribal event. A reader of this book finds the genetic and heartfelt circle of history in the cutting edge of each writer’s language, which becomes the new old work of hands from the earth bones of indigenous peoples. Such creation and labor revealed in these poems make for a watershed anthology, one of inventive inspiration, of breath, a gift to us from the many writers collected here.”
—Linda Hogan
“At their best, anthologies minimize canonization and maximize community and conversation. In New Poets of Native Nations, Heid E. Erdrich invites twenty-one innovative voices to talk to each other and us, and the result is remarkable. I love how this generous collection integrates work from established writers such as Gordon Henry, Jr., LeAnne Howe, and Janet McAdams with newer poets like Natalie Diaz, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Layli Long Soldier, and Tommy Pico, and in so doing illustrates the incredible diversity of contemporary Indigenous poetry. This is an important book not just for Native American writing but for American literature and American history.”
—Dean Rader
“It’s long past time we had a book like this one, with Native poets of many dispositions securely, as Sy Hoahwah says, ‘at the center of the center of the center of things.’ They don’t—and that’s one of the great things about this book—have all that much in common on first read. They don’t need to announce their presence or their existence (though they do that too); they can go in all directions, counting on Native and on modernist models, making it old, making it new, stretching and breaking the frames of lyric, explaining and refusing to explain, going on with the exasperated urbanity of Tommy Pico or getting specific about the ice with the wonderful dg nanouk okpik. They stand together not so much in the particular language they choose, as in what they resist: erasure, homogeneity, all the white whatevers that these poets’ lines blow away. These poets write in a very contemporary English—sometimes; they also, sometimes, write with and in and for other languages. ‘The swamp where / my calling becomes your calling’ exists in Margaret Noodin’s Anishinaabemowin first, and in a language I can read only afterward, and that’s as it should be. Craig Santos Perez casts a net or a word grid broad enough to encompass more concepts than you can fit on any map. Gordon Henry, Jr. declares seriously for the migrants, for the displaced or dispossessed ‘among the almost decolonized,’ trying hard to imagine ‘true sunrise’; Brandy Nālani McDougall finds comic outrage by ‘cooking Captain Cook.’ Overall, it’s a serious counterblast and a congeries of movements and, above all, a large set of poems that can stand on their own, or arrange themselves into formations. Their authors write in compressed lines and in economical versets and prose paragraphs, in terse song forms, in chants, in conversation; they write who they are, they write out of defiance, they write out of loyalty, to and for and about nations, places, collectives, real people, and yet, as Layli Long Soldier has it, ‘Everything is in the language we use.’ Heid E. Erdrich has done long-awaited and patient and generous work in finding and selecting and collecting these poets from many nations, climates, traditions, and even time zones. New Poets of Native Nations is something we need.”
—Stephanie Burt
NEW POETS OF NATIVE NATIONS
NEW
POETS OF
NATIVE NATIONS
Edited by Heid E. Erdrich
Graywolf Press
Compilation and introduction copyright © 2018 by Heid E. Erdrich
The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
Permission acknowledgments appear on pages 281–282.
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Published by Graywolf Press
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Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
All rights reserved.
www.graywolfpress.org
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-809-9
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-999-7
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2018
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953354
Cover design: Mary Austin Speaker
Cover art: Sherwin Bitsui, Nizhónigó náásgóó naaneeká dó
CONTENTS
Introduction Twenty-One Poets for the Twenty-First Century
Heid E. Erdrich
Tacey M. Atsitty
Anasazi
Nightsong
> Downpour
Paper Water
Elegy for Yucca Fruit Woman
Hole through the Rock
Layli Long Soldier
38
Whereas I Did Not Desire in Childhood
Whereas Re-solution’s an Act
Obligations 1
Obligations 2
Tommy Pico
from IRL
from Nature Poem
from Junk
Margaret Noodin
Waawiindamojig / The Promisers
Okanan / Bones
Winiiam Aagimeke / William Making Snowshoes
Agoozimakakiig Idiwag / What the Peepers Say
Jiikimaadizi / A Joyful Life
Mazinbii’amawaan / Sending Messages
Laura Da’
A Mighty Pulverizing Machine
The Haskell Marching Band
Passive Voice
Quarter Strain
Gwen Nell Westerman
Owotaŋna Sececa
Linear Process
Genetic Code
Quantum Theory
Dakota Homecoming
Theory Doesn’t Live Here
Undivided Interest
Jennifer Elise Foerster
Leaving Tulsa
Pottery Lessons I
Birthmark
Chimera
Blood Moon Triptych
Canyon
Natalie Diaz
Dome Riddle
Other Small Thundering
American Arithmetic
The First Water Is the Body
Trevino L. Brings Plenty
For the Sake of Beauty
The Sound of It
Part Gravel, Part Water, All Indian
Blizzard South Dakota
Northeast Portland
Not Just Anybody Can Have One
Red-ish Brown-ish
Plasmic Kiln
Song Syntax Cycle
dg nanouk okpik
Warming
Her/My Arctic Corpse Whale
The Weight of the Arch Distributes the Girth of the Other
A Year Dot
Dog Moon Night at Noatak
She Travels
Julian Talamantez Brolaski
Blackwater Stole My Pronoun
In the Cut
What Do They Know of Suffering, Who Eat of Pineapples Yearround
As the Owl Augurs
Stonewall to Standing Rock
Horse Vision
The Bear and the Salmon
When It Rains It Pours
The Bear Was Born
Sy Hoahwah
Anchor-Screws of Culture
Toward Mount Scott
Ever Since I Can Remember
What Is Left
Before We Are Eaten
Glitter
Hinterlands
Hillbilly Leviathan
Craig Santos Perez
from Lisiensan Ga’lago
from The Legends of Juan Malo [a Malologue]
Ginen the Micronesian Kingfisher [I Sihek]
Ginen Tidelands [Latte Stone Park] [Hagåtña, Guåhan]
(First Trimester)
(Papa and Wākea)
(I Tinituhon)
Gordon Henry, Jr.
Simple Four Part Directions for Making Indian Lit
How Soon
Dear Sonny:
Among the Almost Decolonized
The Mute Scribe Recalls Some Talking Circle
Brandy Nālani McDougall
The Petroglyphs at Olowalu
On Cooking Captain Cook
Pele‘aihonua
Papatuanuku
This Island on Which I Love You
Genesis
M. L. Smoker
Casualties
Crosscurrent
Equilibrium
We are the ones
Heart Butte, Montana
LeAnne Howe
A Duck’s Tune
Finders Keepers: Aboriginal Responses to European Colonization
Ballast
Catafalque
Catafalque II
The Rope Seethes
Cedar Sigo
Now I’m a Woman
Thrones
Green Rainbow Song
Things to Do in Suquamish
Taken Care Of
Aquarelle
Light Unburied, Unchained
Double Vision
Karenne Wood
Amoroleck’s Words
My Standard Response
In Memory of Shame
Abracadabra, an Abcedarian
Bartolomé de las Casas, 1542
The Poet I Wish I Was
Eric Gansworth
Speaking through Our Nations’ Teeth
It Goes Something Like This
Repatriating Ourselves
Snagging the Eye from Curtis
A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function
… Bee
Janet McAdams
The Hands of the Taino
Leaving the Old Gods
Ghazal of Body
from “The Collectors”
Tiger on the Shoulder
Hunters, Gatherers
Earthling
Author Notes
Editor’s Acknowledgments
Permissions
INTRODUCTION
Twenty-One Poets for the Twenty-First Century
These poems create a place, somewhere we could go. The place of this poetry feels like a familiar country, even though it is made from many nations. This is not to say that poems are lands—certainly not our lands, which we protect rather than open—and yet these poems do create space. Here in these pages, I can show you the brilliantly lit dimension I have visited for several years. Here is poetry of a new time—an era of witness, of coming into voice, an era of change and of political and cultural resurgence—a time shared within this anthology in poetry forceful and subtle, hysterical and lyrical, ironic and earnest, sorrowful and joyful, and presented in ways harder to define, but made of the recent now, the lived realities that poets of Native nations write.
Native nations are our homelands, our political bodies, our heritages, and the places that make us who we are as Natives in the United States of America. More than 566 Native nations exist in the U.S. and yet “Native American poetry” does not really exist. Our poetry might be hundreds of distinct tribal and cultural poetries as well as American poetry. The extraordinary poets gathered in New Poets of Native Nations have distinct and close ties to specific indigenous nations—including Alaskan Native and island nations. Most are members or citizens of a tribe: Dakota, Diné, Onondaga, Choctaw, and Anishinaabe/Ojibwe (my tribe), and more than a dozen others. These nations determine their own membership and their own acceptance of descendants. My criterion that a poet have a clear connection to a Native nation has nothing to do with blood quantum, the federal basis for recognition of American Indians. Race also has nothing to do with it. Geography is not a factor. These poets live on reservations, in nations, and in cities or towns. Some of their reservations and homelands are urban; most are rural. Many of these poets have relatives across the borders of Mexico and Canada. Most are multiracial. They are also a diverse group in terms of age, gender, education, and poetic styles, but they have one thing in common. Not one of them identifies as “Native American” alone.
For this book, I gave myself the joyful, challenging, and ultimately uncomfortable task of selecting just twenty-one poets of Native nations from dozens and dozens of fine writers whose first books were published after the year 2000. I chose the year not because it defines a literary movement or even a generation, but because it is a marker after which poets of Native nations began publishing first books in greater numbers than before. Similarly, the “new” in the title does not mean young, but new to book publication in this century. While much of the work in this anthology is new or recent, I also chose previously published poems. My focus is on authors’ first books and poems that convey p
oetic vision and promise. First books are gateways, the launching of careers, and the way these poets influence and teach other poets. Many of these poets won first book awards or book competitions. Several were given publication opportunities through the efforts of poet-editors Joseph Bruchac, Allison Hedge Coke, Geary Hobson, and Janet McAdams. I asked contributors to tell me about their first book experience, and I incorporated their answers into “author notes” along with their suggestions for reading “newer” new poets whose first books are eagerly anticipated. I also asked them about mentors and was surprised to see how often they mentored one another. Solidarity among Native writers, and involvement in professional literary associations, as well as increased access to education and mentorship experiences, particularly through the Institute of American Indian Arts, are no doubt some of the reasons publication has opened up for poets of Native nations in the twenty-first century. Resurgence of culture, the urgency of environmental and social crisis, and the rise of social media are no doubt compelling reasons these authors are publishing as well. Whatever the catalyst, first books are coming out so fast that unfortunately I was unable to include some of the very recent new poets mentioned by several contributors.
While these poets are new to publishing in this century, “new” is not a theme here. In fact, there is no theme to this anthology. However, there are a few commonalities I note: uses of indigenous languages, hybrid styles, and allusions to or direct mentions of other writers from Native nations. Together, while creating work on their own terms, these new poets from dozens of distinct cultures present a vast diversity of literary approaches and national stances. Many of these new writers stretch genre boundaries to include image, song, film, visual art, dance, and history in their performances and presentations of their works as well as publish in multiple literary genres. Many of these new writers advance indigenous language revitalization in their work as translators and teachers, and by incorporating their original languages in their poems in English. Yet, while these generalities about these poets hold true for many, this book does not seek to define a shared aesthetic or cultural context. Instead, New Poets of Native Nations collects across a shared experience. These are writers who have grappled with, defined, and redefined the notion of “Native American literature.” As their author notes suggest, they have done so through reading and working with other Native writers of the twentieth century (sometimes called the Native American Renaissance) and those poets who closely followed in the late twentieth century. This new poetry stands in relation to generations, but it does not bow to that context.