Issue 20 — Our Songs Came Through
When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, ed. Joy Harjo et al.
OK, I’m finally leaving town.
Here’s my pre-departure chaos. As long as you have your picnic basket, your picnic quilt, your V-8 juice, your peanut butter and your, erm, small suitcase full of books . . . you are good to go.
Tanglewood or BUST!
I’m planning to share some cultural highlights and local color with subscribers, so I can finally make good on my promise from earlier this summer. Forecast looks good for outdoor enjoyments of all sorts. 🌞
Review
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through
Edited by Joy Harjo
Norton, 2020
458 pages
$19.95
It is a striking name for a book: When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through. In a recent interview, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo explained that she crafted the title of this landmark anthology of Native poetry out of the English translation of a Hawaiian creation chant called “Kumulipo Wā ‘ekahi.” The translation was finished in 1897 by Queen Lili’uokalani, two years after the United States overthrew her government and took possession of the Hawaiian islands.
At the the time that turned the heat of the earth,
At the time when the heavens turned and changed,
At the time when the light of the sun was subdued
To cause light to break forth . . .
The puissance of these lines in our era when summer sun is routinely subdued with the smoke of massive, raging wildfires cannot be overstated. The qualities that make this anthology so truly important include: its historical sweep, its compelling regional organization and the expert care with which Harjo and her team of editors have chosen poems from 161 poets representing ninety native nations. Natalie Diaz, N. Scott Momaday and Louise Erdrich are here, but so are many, many more. And another thing. These poems represent a vast range of modes and experiences that should help readers get past tired tropes and limiting stereotypes.
For example, you’ll find Henry Real Bird’s poem called “Thought” which quotes the speaker’s grandfather saying
“Thought is like a cloud
You can see through shadow to see nothing
But you can see shadow when it touches something you know,
Like that cloud’s shadow
Touching the Wolf Teeth Mountains . . .
And just after it comes Nila Northsun’s poem “99 Things To Do Before You Die,” based on a Cosmo article full of bucket list items only rich people can afford.
. . .
learn of 20 ways to prepare
Commodity canned pork
fall in love with a white person
fall in love with an indian
eat ta-nee-ga with a sioux
learn to make good fry bread
be an extra in an indian movie
learn to speak your language
On the subject of languages, reading this book is an invitation to think about how to be an ally in efforts to revitalize indigenous languages. According to this piece by Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagel (“The U.S. has spent more money erasing Native languages than saving them”), “of the 115 Indigenous languages spoken in the U.S. today, two are healthy, 34 are in danger, and 79 will go extinct within a generation without serious intervention. In other words, 99% of the Native American languages spoken today are in danger.” I also recommend this thought-provoking long read from the critic Adam Mikanowski about the hegemony of English. Mikanowski cites a number of scholars on the important question of what we lose when we suppress and lose other languages. I’ll follow up here and on Twitter if and when I learn more about ways to be an ally in this work.
A number of the poems in this book engage with the horrific history of Indian boarding schools, including one remarkable, anonymous example, “My Industrial Work,” from a student newspaper in 1913. It is replete with mordant, adolescent humor and layers of subterranean, spiritual resistance.
Then out in front the troops all stand
Saluting the flag with our hats in our hand.
While standing in the wind our hair gets wavy
But, just the same, we right face to gravy.
Now this may sound like going a fishing,
But this is my only industrial position.
Many of the poems weave Native language together with English in beautiful and interesting ways. Joy Harjo writes,
We were forced to forsake our languages for English in the civilizing genocidal process. We are aware of the irony, for many of us, of our writing in English. But we also believe English can be another avenue through which to create poetry, and poetry in English and other languages can live alongside texts created and performed within our respective indigenous languages. It is the nature of the divided world in which we live.
In her poem “A New Language,” Casandra Lopez writes
My words are always
collapsingupon themselves, too tight
in my mouth. I want a new
language. One with at least
50 words for griefand 50 words for love, so I can offer
them to the living
who mourn the dead.
Performance and oral traditions are very much alive in many of the poems collected here; they are so beautiful and strong when voiced aloud. Others clearly reflect the multi-disciplinary artistry of many of the poets who are also musicians or visual artists. And many connect to an activist present that sings to an imagined future. One of the editors, Kimberly Blaeser calls it “a poetry of continuance.” These poems speak to each other across generations, but each responds to its own historical moment.
The Pacific section of the book that begins with the Kumulipo creation chant ends with another poem called “Kumulipo” by the contemporary poet Jamaica Helolimeleikalani Osorio. This poem is a genealogy designed to ensure the speaker doesn’t forget the names in her lineage,
because i have forgotten my own grandparents’ middle names
Forgotten what color thread god used to sew me together with.
She performed it at the White House in 2009. More recently, she has been deeply involved in indigenous protest movement against a new telescope on Mauna Kea, and featured in a PBS mini-documentary called “This Is The Way We Rise.” The light of the world is indeed subdued these days, but we can find comfort and courage from the native songs that are coming through to guide us with their truths.
Other Voices, Other Forms
Rose Simpson is a ceramic artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. She is descended from a long line of artists, and is creating a profound, and ever-evolving body of work.
She writes,
My life-work is a seeking out of tools to use to heal the damages I have experienced as a human being of our postmodern and postcolonial era— objectification, stereotyping, and the disempowering detachment of our creative selves through the ease of modern technology.
This photo by Kate Russell shows some of Simpson’s recent work.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4OHz1OlXGF/
This video from the Denver Art Museum chronicles Simpson’s fascinating adornment and empowerment project during which she restored a 1985 Chevy El Camino and made it into “a power object.”
Poem of the Week
Joy Harjo’s book Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is the book of poems that has meant the most to me in the last five years. Here is how the title poem ends:
For Your Reading Radar
Given that the heat dome is returning to large swaths of North America, now seems like a good time to contemplate the potentially vicious cycle that is forming up as hotter temperatures prompt humans to accelerate their use of energy-intensive air cooling systems. Eric Dean Wilson has just written the book to help us. It’s called After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort. Writing for the New York Times, Hope Jahren says “Wilson dares to state plainly that lasting climate solutions hinge on our capacity to redefine what makes our lives meaningful, not on new technologies or better products.”
For Your Calendar
OK New Yorkers, finish your coffee and shape a course for Governor’s Island. The 10th annual New York City Poetry Festival is happening this weekend live and in person. It’s mostly outside and it’s FREE!
The schedule is packed with readings and happenings for all ages. Headliners are Terrance Hayes, Deborah Landau, Ariana Reines, and Kaveh Akhbar. Register here.
Bookstore of the Week
Magic City Books, the non-profit, indie bookstore and literary center in Tulsa, OK has a long relationship with Joy Harjo and her work. They have a mini-site for signed copies of her work. They have also created a curated guide to books about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CPqm5V-jQwe/
The cover image for this issue is the Bears’ Ears formation photographed by Bruce Reinhart and made available by him under a Creative Commons license. Thank you, Bruce. A group of Lummi artists and activists just yesterday stopped to meet The Women of Bears Ears as they continue on their journey to deliver a hand carved totem pole to Washington, DC this summer.
Wishing you well. xo Nicie