New Poets of Native Nations - Softcover

Erdrich, Heid E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555978096 ISBN 13: 9781555978099

Verlag: GRAY WOLF PR, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

A landmark anthology celebrating twenty-one Native poets first published in the twenty-first century

New Poets of Native Nations gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry. Heid E. Erdrich has selected twenty-one poets whose first books were published after the year 2000 to highlight the exciting works coming up after Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie. Collected here are poems of great breadth—long narratives, political outcries, experimental works, and traditional lyrics—and the result is an essential anthology of some of the best poets writing now.

Poets included are Tacey M. Atsitty, Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Laura Da’, Natalie Diaz, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Eric Gansworth, Gordon Henry, Jr., Sy Hoahwah, LeAnne Howe, Layli Long Soldier, Janet McAdams, Brandy Nalani McDougall, Margaret Noodin, dg okpik, Craig Santos Perez, Tommy Pico, Cedar Sigo, M. L. Smoker, Gwen Westerman, and Karenne Wood.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Heid E. Erdrich is the author of five collections of poetry, including Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media. She is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain, and lives and teaches in Minneapolis.

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New Poets Of Native Nations

By Heid E. Erdrich

GRAYWOLF PRESS

Copyright © 2018 Heid E. Erdrich
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55597-809-9

Contents

Introduction Twenty-One Poets for the Twenty-First Century Heid E. Erdrich, xi, 
Tacey M. Atsitty, 3, 
Layli Long Soldier, 15, 
Tommy Pico, 29, 
Margaret Noodin, 45, 
Laura Da', 55, 
Gwen Nell Westerman, 65, 
Jennifer Elise Foerster, 75, 
Natalie Diaz, 91, 
Trevino L. Brings Plenty, 107, 
dg nanouk okpik, 121, 
Julian Talamantez Brolaski, 131, 
Sy Hoahwah, 145, 
Craig Santos Perez, 155, 
Gordon Henry, Jr., 167, 
Brandy Nalani McDougall, 181, 
M. L. Smoker, 193, 
LeAnne Howe, 203, 
Cedar Sigo, 213, 
Karenne Wood, 227, 
Amoroleck's Words, 
Eric Gansworth, 239, 
Janet McAdams, 253, 
Author Notes, 269, 
Editor's Acknowledgments, 279, 
Permissions, 281, 

CHAPTER 1

TACEY M. ATSITTY

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné, is Tsénahabilnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle People) from Cove, Arizona. She is a recipient of the Truman Capote Literary Trust Award in Creative Writing, Corson-Browning Poetry Prize, Morning Star Creative Writing Award, and Philip Freund Prize. She holds bachelor's degrees from Brigham Young University and the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University.

Atsitty's first book is Rain Scald (2018).

Anasazi

How can we die when we're already
prone to leaving the table mid-meal
like Ancient Ones gone to breathe
elsewhere. Salt sits still, but pepper's gone
rolled off in a rush. We've practiced dying for
a long time: when we skip dance or town,
when we chew. We've rounded out
like dining room walls in a canyon, eaten
through by wind — Sorry we rushed off;
the food wasn't ours. Sorry the grease sits
white on our plates, and the jam that didn't set
— use it as syrup to cover every theory of us.


Nightsong

To The gorge dwellers

With no fire, you offer
nothing. Say,

a body found, fall creek
gorge. Eventual

it is, meaning to happen.
Meaning to say,

Dear fellow ______,
It is with deep

Name — Name —
Name, strung like

hair. Water strands
made old, made

white. Too close
to dark. Second tragedy

fall creek throat.
Repeated repeated loss.

Thirst-in almanac of
the gorges. Litany

of wrists. Look
down at your wrists,

down here where
the thick laps

the lips. Where you
haven't been taught:

pull yourself out of
the plunge pool

and look for fire, look
for rings shifted

to your thumb and
forefinger. There, like

vapor wrapping you
in strips. In this falling

moment, cities
sink into the depths,

drown. The earth
face carried up and

away in the current of
a whirlwind, where water

and mountains hide
in deep blue. What faces

bring: a reservoir filled,
following the night

when day fell into day,
soon followed by night

into night to night,
thrice with no moon,

thrice with no flame —
kept in the thick thick.


Downpour

I asked him down here:

where virgin belts dangle from my thighs

where my sash belt pulls the sky in, knuckles go white, and all
without a moan

where leaves turn so quickly, already red with winter
where we wait for deluge, but it never comes

not yet ripe, only vocables can embody

Down here, I can't pull out of this tune to utter

the cowardice of hand and tongue what I wanted

I can't tear myself from this heap of blankets; this rocking comfort, my
— self: the only one I allow

and our son, I leave him, like a monster, cooing in the next gorge over

* * *

I can't sing over the onrush of falling water, that pounding connect from
mouth to base

lick cloudburst, the way I want

Down here, I speak with a tongue of cedar: bark and kindle

the clouds last night, they held back

But like I said, we shouldn't chant what's not ours

he sacks himself up for me to unravel

a bag of pears. I give one to him, and it gushes with each pull of skin

* * *

And still I can't tear away from these blankets
even when he says he's ready for downpour:

I offer him my hand to guide me down the gorge

But don't play my flute for him; I don't want him to fall in
— with me, like I did. I strum him so thinly, and still he chants

I am left to cramp, my entire body over

* * *

I bring him down here to let my hair loose, then ask him to put it in a knot

my confidence is worn to warps, a bald

fringe my breath no longer shapes syllables of

his name he says rain and I go beautifully together

what it means to apologize

how I curl my hair even though my wrists ache for him

how my nails chip before the moons push on through

how I cross my legs for him as he blows at rain

his fingers wrap our silence

how I prefer the heavens to rainfall

how for him, I am all of this — as sorry as I am when I
say,

The sky is so hollow from child.


Paper Water

AFTER SB 2109

X threads us into rope, a weave of human
arms X-ed down a canyon wall. Voice

writes nights like these and calls
for complete night, without

scraps of light or dissonance or stuttered
cries. Crumble of tree limbs: X, there

we are again. This is how far we climb
for life. We'd rub out before reaching

the ground, where water cuts —
Once a man had only water to pray with.

Once life is the blur of a windmill,
each crisscross sets another arm

to bark. Cessation of the line; break
it up there. Article X: delineate marginal

arcs, say everything within windmill shot —
Whereas injury to water was writ

and concluded: how far inside earth
will they reach? Whereas for groundwater,

they steady their wrists for a slow up-stitch
across their own eyelids.


Elegy for Yucca Fruit Woman

Without me, she said. Go —
I'm going to the rock
that once had wings. My life
rolls like rock clods
down a volcanic throat, circling
the tips of big winds beneath

* * *

poised arms wing bone, surrounded
and closing, dust hinge. In upstroke, a
slow separate in landing then takeoff. To
take air, those inward whooshes as if blessing
oneself: marrow leaving the hollow

* * *

pop. She knelt with women
filling the earth: mush in tin
after tin, filled in with breaking
sun. Kneeling down, she'd flap
dough with the wood pop,
her hands whirring. The air
bubbles rising with heat ready to —
Later she'd send me to 7-2-11
clenching quarters for —

* * *

at two points: they say a man flew
with a life-feather, quill in hand,
from the top of Shiprock down
to the people, having slain
monster birds. Plumes
and all their vanes ending
in flight after bird strike

* * *

"A female eagle swooped east,"
she once told me. "It was like...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: GRAY WOLF PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1555978096
• ISBN 13: 9781555978099
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland