Settlement

by Micah Ling

Poetry. With a historian's perspective and a journalist's eye, Micah Ling surveys the oppression of America's indigenous people and the imposition of the United States government upon them. These inequalities are then used to draw parallels to the current Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and subsequent crimes and inequity. Set in two acts with two casts of characters, from Marlon Brando to Leonard Peltier to Banksy, SETTLEMENT cries out against injustices while celebrating the human will to persevere.

68 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2012

About the author

Micah Ling lives in New York City. She is the author of, SETTLEMENT (2012), SWEETGRASS (2010), and THREE ISLANDS (2009). She received the 2011 Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Emerging Authors Award. Most recently, she is the author of FLASHES OF LIFE (Hobart Handbooks, 2015). micahling.com

Reviews

[Literary Review The · Rating 5 out of 5]

Micah Ling
Settlement
(Buffalo, NY: Sunnyoutside, 2012)

By Callista Buchen

"Settlment" was reviewed by The Literary Review
"Loss Control" Fall 2012, The Shortlist
www.theliteraryreview.org

Micah Ling’s Settlement, a two-act collection, explores conflict and colonialism in two contexts. The first half is about “The Reservations of the United States,” and Act Two concentrates on “Palestinian Territories.” Each section uses a unique assembled cast of voices and places (speakers include Marlon Brando, Bansky, and
TLR shortlist 195
Walid Husseini) to consider containment and opposition, as well as the cost to indi- vidual and community. Anger is a key force for the work. The collection begins with an epitaph from Sherman Alexie: “Poetry = Anger x Imagination.” This resonates most strongly in pieces like the penultimate poem, a kind of list of definitions for “Settlement”: “a coming to terms / ... / :Sinking of all or part of a structure. / ... / :Settlements settle the settlers.”