Seamus Heaney 1939-2013

Amid the reports of war in Syria, I completely brushed over the news that Irish poet, Seamus Heaney passed away. Heaney was born in County Derry in 1939, on a farm called Mossbawn. In many ways, that place is still the center of his poetic world, its omphalos. Heaney used the word to describe the farm, turning the word itself into a kind of sonic vehicle. In that way Heaney brought a sense of irish renaissance, or more accurately, a rebirth of Northern Irish poetry. Seamus Heaney’s conceptions of powerful informed regionalistic poetry earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The Squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where we was digging.

The course boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

 

From Squarings

xlviii

Strange how things in the offing, once they’re sensed,
Convert to things foreknown;
And how what’s come upon its manifest

Only in light of what has been gone through.
Seventh heaven may be
The whole truth of a sixth sense come to pass.

At any rate, when light breaks over me
The way it did on the road beyond Coleraine
Where wind got saltier, the sky more hurried

And silver lamé shivered on the Bann
Out in mid-channel between the painted poles,
That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me.

Encounter by Czeslaw Milosz

It’s been so hot here in SLC it’s nice to look at something chilly and read a poem with cold images.

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

For many years Milosz’s poetry was little noticed in the United States, though he was highly regarded in Poland. Recognition in Poland came in defiance of official government resistance to Milosz’s work. The communist regime refused to publish the books of a defector; for many years only underground editions of his poems were secretly printed and circulated in Poland. But in 1980, when Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the communist government was forced to relent. A government-authorized edition of Milosz’s poems was issued and sold a phenomenal 200,000 copies. One sign of Milosz’s widespread popularity in Poland occurred when Polish workers in Gdansk unveiled a monument to their comrades who were shot down by the communist police. Two quotations were inscribed on the monument: one was taken from the Bible; the other was taken from a poem by Milosz.

Czeslaw Milosz, “Encounter” from The Collected Poems, 1931-1987. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalites, Inc. Used by permission of the HarperCollins Publishers.

When at a Certain Party in NYC

Wherever you’re from sucks,
and wherever you grew up sucks,
and everyone here lives in a converted
chocolate factory or deconsecrated church
without an ugly lamp or souvenir coffee cup
in sight, but only carefully edited objets like
the Lacanian soap dispenser in the kitchen
that looks like an industrial age dildo, and
when you rifle through the bathroom
looking for a spare tampon, you discover
that even their toothpaste is somehow more
desirable than yours.

And later you go
with a world famous critic to eat a plate
of sushi prepared by a world famous chef from
Sweden and the roll is conceived to look like
“a strand of pearls around a white throat,” and is
so confusingly beautiful that it makes itself
impossible to eat. And your friend back home—-
who says the pioneers who first settled
the great asphalt parking lot of our
middle were not in fact heroic but really
the chubby ones who lacked the imagination
to go all the way to California—it could be that
she’s on to something.

Because, admit it,
when you look at the people on these streets,
the razor-blade women with their strategic bones
and the men wearing Amish pants with
interesting zippers, it’s pretty clear that you
will never cut it anywhere that constitutes
a where, that even ordering a pint of tuna salad in
a deli is an illustrative exercise in self-doubt.

So when you see the dogs on the high-rise elevators
practically tweaking, panting all the way down
from the 19th floor to the 1st, dying to get on
with their long planned business of snuffling
trash or peeing on something to which all day
they’ve been looking forward, what you want is
to be on the fastest Conestoga home, where the other
losers live and where the tasteless azaleas are,
as we speak, halfheartedly exploding.

-Erin Belieu

When at a Certain Party in NYC,  first appeared in 32 Poems and was reprinted in Best American Poetry 2011. Poem copyright 2011 Erin Belieu, all rights reserved, used by permission of the author.  Belieu was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She attended Boston University, and Ohio State University receiving advanced degrees in the area of poetry. She now teaches in the MFA/Ph.D. Creative Writing Program at Florida State University. Check out her other works on goodreads.

Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

         But being too happy in thine happiness,—

                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

                        In some melodious plot

         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

         Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

                        And purple-stained mouth;

         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

                And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

         What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                        And leaden-eyed despairs,

         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

                Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;

                        But here there is no light,

         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

         Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

                Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

                        And mid-May’s eldest child,

         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

         I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

         To take into the air my quiet breath;

                Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

         To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

                        In such an ecstasy!

         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

                   To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

         No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

         In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

                She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

                        The same that oft-times hath

         Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

         To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

         As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

         Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

                Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

                        In the next valley-glades:

         Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

-John Keats, 1975-1821

A treat. Benedict Cumberbatch (Star Trek Into Darkness, Sherlock) reads the hell out of this poem. This is what poetry is supposed to sound and feel like,

The Absolutely True Diary & Sherman Alexie

Mid-August was a fun time for me. I was asked by my favoritest, most awesome professor to collaborate on a lecture for The Summit County Library One Book, One Community Program in Park City, Utah. Our topic would be Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-TIme Indian and The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven. It was smashing! I really could talk about literature all day. So…

Sherman Alexie and Native Literature, in general:

Native Authors whose work has created a  renaissance for the genre include M. Scott Mamaday, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon  Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie. I call them the Furious Five.  Others may call them that too but I called them that first! Sherman Alexie is a pretty cool dude. If you haven’t heard of him, you should look him up. At least follow his twitter feed. It’s hilarious! He is hilarious, irreverent, and creative. Alexie is a poet, screenwriter, teacher, and father. He’s known for his in-your-face rhetoric of contemporary Indian life. Native American/American Indian not Indian from India. Alexie is Spokane Indian born to a very hard-working mother and an absent-tee father. He studied at Gonzaga University and majored in American Studies. Random. Since then he has published a butt-load of novels, collections, and poetry. Most notably is his collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven which was adapted by Alexie into the movie, Smoke Signals directed by Cheyenne-Arapaho director, Chris Eyre. (Look him up too!)

Sherman Alexie

This book turned 20 this year!

Here is a clip from Smoke Signals: 

I lectured on Alexie’s YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. If you haven’t read it. Go out to your local bookstore and buy it. DO IT NOW!  

Buy it, or die!

The lecture was quite an experience. My parents, sister, and I made the trek from Kearns to Kimball Junction. It’s about a 45-minute drive up the canyon but it’s like leaving/entering 2 different worlds. A lower-income, diverse community to an affluent, upper-class, hoity-toity, white community. Interesting enough, I was living the book I would be discussing.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,  let’s call it Part-Time Indian, is a coming of age YA novel set in Alexie’s hometown of Wellpinit, Washington. The protagonist is Arnold/Junior Spirit.

My name is Junior,” I said. “And my name is Arnold. It’s Junior and Arnold. I’m both. I felt like two different people inside of one body(60).

Junior/Arnold decides to leave his reservation, the physical epicenter of his cultural identity, for the more affluent, white school at Reardan. As Junior/Arnold leaves for school each day he is metaphorically and literally crossing from one world into the other. On the Rez, Junior sees himself as a nerd who can’t play basketball, who loves his family despite living with the trauma of  alcoholism and poverty, and as someone without hope or a future. Off the Rez,  Arnold, identifies himself with the antiquated and racist stereotypes of Indians, a basketball star, and a person who has hope and a future. As Arnold or Junior, the kid is as funny as hell and has the insight of a 55 year old medicine man.

My lecture included the idea of Reservation Realism, ( a literary genre specific to Native American authors who implement literary techniques to create realistic elements of reservation life) that Alexie is known, and often criticized for. In response to the criticism Alexie has said, “I got a lot of criticism because alcoholism is such a loaded topic for Indians. People thought I was writing about stereotypes, but more than anything I was writing about my own life”.  Alexie does have a penchant for deconstructing Native American stereotypes. He wrote a poem, How to Write the Great American Indian Novel about it. Hilarious! 

The themes within the text are pretty deep. I’ve narrowed it down to three: Identity, Poverty, and Hope.

I’ve touched on Arnold’s identity. Half of himself is tied to the Rez, half of it off the Rez. He’s a Part-Time Indian. He comes to realize that he is more than his race and his culture:

I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators. And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers. And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization. And that’s when I knew that I was going to be okay (217).

Poverty is so prevalent.  Reservations across the United States are overwhelmingly impoverished. Why is that? Well, let’s look at the history. The US government was all, We don’t want your kind here so we’re gonna put you on shitty pieces of land, without assistance. EVEN THOUGH WE PROMISED IT TO YOU. and you can live there until you die, or we decide to kill you. And then they were forgotten. Not just for a few months. For decades. For generations. We’re still trying to overcome the problems from 200 years ago. Arnold has a heartbreaking experience with poverty. His dog, Oscar, is sick. No money for the vet. Can’t let him suffer. The dog is shot because “a bullet only costs two cents”. It’s sad because it’s true,  Indian kids learn about life this harshly. Poverty is a vicious cycle and sooner or later it will affect how you perceive yourself:

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it (13).

Hope is the element that ignites Arnold/Junior’s life.  The book takes slow turns, dips and dives, all the while elevating our protagonist to a higher level of hope. Doing well in school, on the basketball team, and with his girlfriend confirm what Arnold/Junior had been so afraid to ask, Am I worth the effort to get out of this place and make something of myself? To convey the hope Arnold/Junior has for his future, Alexie juxtaposes Arnold/Junior’s plight with that of the immigrants who come to America. I know right? Indians and the colonizers in the same boat? But Alexie pulls it off.  Arnold says:

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream (217).

How interesting it is to have the comparison of immigrants and Indians. It drives home the themes of finding oneself in a strange land, and through self-determination create a future that was never before available. This is the plight that so many Native youth are experiencing today. It warms my soul to the core to hear of all of the wonderful and innovative ideas Native youth are creating. We never do find out if Arnold will continue to call himself Arnold or go with Junior.

Part-Time Indian and other Native Literature is pretty cool. Craig S. Womack, Creek-Cherokee scholar has said,  “A key component of nationhood is a people’s idea of themselves, their imaginings of who they are. The ongoing expression of a tribal voice, through imagination, language, and literature, contribute to keeping sovereignty alive in the citizens of a nation and gives sovereignty a meaning that is defined within the tribe rather than external sources”(Red on Red). The political component of sovereignty infuses itself within Native Literature empowering Native communities to fight colonization and break those vicious cycles of alcoholism, poverty, and hopelessness.

I was invited back to the One Book, One Community Program. This time it will be with the teens whom I will speak to. I will let you know how that goes!

How to Write the Great American Indian Novel

All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.

If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man

then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white

that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps

at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water.

If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed.

Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives

of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust

at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures.

Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian men
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.

There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.

Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian

then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed

and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.

If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside a white woman.
Sometimes there are complications.

An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,

everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.

For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.

In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.

Sherman Alexie, “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” from The Summer of Black Widows. Copyright ©  by Sherman Alexie. Reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press. Source: The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press, 1996)

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

The Lesser Blessed

One thing I can say about Native writers, they sure know how to get angst right! Like ‘John Hughes’ right. Richard Van Camp’s novel, The Lesser Blessed is no exception. I was introduced to this book from one of my professor’s.  I read it, wept, denounced humanity, cried some more, and then decided to write my Senior thesis on it. It is one of the most exceptional books I have ever read.

The story revolves around a Dogrib, First Nations teenager, Larry Sole, in the fictional town Fort Smith in the non-fictional Canadian Northwest Territories. Larry is a typical teen, he loves music, has a hate/love relationship with his frenemy Johnny, and is obsessed with doggy-styling it with Juliet Hope, but he also has a horrible secret from his past. And it’s a doozy.

Van Camp creates something so alarmingly poetic and raw. He blends traditional Dogrib stories with the contemporary, meshing a pre-and post-colonial narrative. As literary metaphors go this book is bursting with them. There is the juxtaposition of the loneliness of the Northwest Territories and Larry, fire and destruction, and physical & emotional scars. Then Van Camp rolls out the references to Dogrib culture combining a traditional Dogrib creation story with Larry’s own hilarious, honest narrative. References to ravens, ptarmigans, and blue monkeys are extremely metaphoric for Larry and the Dogrib people. Well, I don’t know about the blue monkeys.

The heaviness of the book comes from the issues it tackles; domestic violence, sexual and emotional abuse, drugs, alcoholism, and the intergenerational trauma from residential/boarding school horrors. The heart of the book lies within the flickering hope Larry Sole has about the future and the love he has to offer. Van Camp has created a character that you want to hold and comfort, then ditch school with to go listen to some Iron Maiden.

My thesis looked into the hope Native Literature can bring to the Native community. The effects of colonization are ever still present in the day-to-day life our people, and we struggle. We struggle in how to view ourselves, how we keep our traditions alive and how to find our place. It’s writers like Van Camp and characters like Larry that support us in those struggles, so we can determine how we see ourselves so we can change our future. This is why I love to read Native literature!! The Lesser Blessed is unparalleled in its humor, pain, and well-written First Nation experiences. As I read and re-read this glorious book, I always walk away with greater hope for my Native community.

The Lesser Blessed was also made into a movie and can be purchased on Amazon.com or iTunes. I have seen it and I loved it. I was so happy that they captured the feeling of the book. Joel Evans portrayed Larry’s sweet personality and he did a wonderful job. I would definitely add this to my movie collection. You can watch the trailer here: