In an Angry Season

by Lisa D. Chavez

A white woman navigates her fear and uncertainty to learn the ways of the people she called savages, until she begins to dream “in Dakota, syllables sliding / on my tongue like tender pieces of meat.” An African man, on display as a cannibal at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, sees into the “humiliations heaped up / as on overfilled plates . . . / . . . a country that casually / consumes its own.” A woman holds the gray-blue barrel of a gun in her mouth, “the taste familiar / as her own blood.” With an unexcelled command of narrative verse, Lisa Chávez tells the stories of American lives across more than a century. Whether retelling nineteenth-century captivity narratives or depicting contemporary American women confronting addiction and despair, Chávez investigates issues of identity and self-definition in the face of an often harsh and unremitting history. Her story-poems explore the ways in which people have been made captive—whether to racism or national policy, to bad marriages or alcoholism, to poverty or emotion—from the Inuit woman birthing a son among strangers to the wife now deranged by desire for another “He’s the smoky slow-burn of chipotle on the tongue. My golden idol. My gospel revival. He’s hashish sweet and languorous—my body’s one desire.” In the end, Chávez shows us a New World of promise in which an alchemist’s assistant summons stories from stones by calling their names with “clicks of her tongue, / syllables of silver, turquoise, and jade,” and a Native woman discovers her true power in an Alaskan bar. Passionate and political, In an Angry Season is a work of startling depth and breadth—an American history in poetry—that asks us what it means to be civilized.

Genres: Poetry

103 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2001

Reviews

[ALICIA MOGOLLON · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my kind of poetry. Poetry that tells epic tales, takes you on a journey- lifetimes of vivid imagery and emotion pour out of Lisa D. Chavez' tightly woven stanzas. I love you, Lisa D. Chavez for your honest, blunt, poignant lyric.
"In The Antelope Hills" is about Cynthia Ann Parker who spent ten years as a captive among the Comanches until she was 'rescued' James DeShields who writes about her in "Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of her Capture", (1886) is quoted as saying "...There was no doubt as to her identity with the little girl lost and mourned so long -- but O, so changed!"

Chavez gives voice to Cynthia Ann Parker...

In The Antelope Hills

In the season of the hoar frost--the earth
stiff as bone, in the season when the iced
grasses rattle in the clawing wind, then
they came. So cold that day. We women worked
butchering a buffalo. I showed Topsannah,
my little girl, how to warm her numb hands
in the rich red flesh. The meat
a blessing. Our hands gloved in blood.

We should have heard them coming,
heard the ring of iron hooves
on frozen ground. But we laughed
and sang as we worked, and they swept upon us
unheard, guns already aimed. White men,
their animal faces bristling with hair. I called
on the earth to open and shelter us,
but it would not heed my cries.
My sisters' blood congealed
on that indifferent soil.

I wished to die there too, with
my people. My eyes, those terrible
sky-colored curses, gave me away.
Taken prisoner, we passed through our camp:
all blood and ruin, even our ponies
slain. My husband's body face down
in the dirt, a lone dog lapping
at his wounds. My daughter and myself
captive. Only my son escaped.

They brought us here to this shell
of a house, a tangle of rooms stiff
with silence and pain. What do they want,
these pale old people who call me
by a name I'd learned to forget? Cynthia Ana.
They saw in me the child lost years ago.
She is long dead. I am Naduah, wife
of Peta Nocona, mother of Topsannah
and Quanah. Comanche. I sang
my place in my family loud, sang
into their shuttered faces. And they
chattered back, peering into my eyes, imperious
as magpies. Topsannah, they clucked over
like hens, but here, I have seen
how the chickens--penned--turn against
the strange chick, beaks sharp as thorns.
Their eyes glitter with cruelty.

So slowly passed the months,
surely we were trapped in some evil
enchantment, and the same endless
days, rubbing one against another,
part of the spell. I prayed for release,
until my prayers wore thin
as the moccasins I fought to keep
on my feet. Release did not come for me.
But some cruel spirit must have twisted my pleas,
for Topsannah sickened and died. In despair, I flung
myself through the window, but outside
the night--turned mocking and unfamiliar--shocked me to stillness,
stopped my escape. The ache
in my bleeding body distant
as those whose loss I mourned.

They caught me, those strangers
who call me family. Brought me back,
tied me to the bed. Restrained,
like the hopeless animals they keep.
Each day they bring me food
I will not eat, nor hear
their voices; I brush them away
like flies. Daily I am weaker,
my life grown faint with dreaming.
There, they wait, my husband and daughter,
and I talk to them, words rolling
on my tongue like bits of bright
corn. I need no other sustenance.
My body is white; my blue eyes
betrayed me. But my true people
await me. I will leave this body behind
and pass with them like rain
through the sweet grass and sage.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, 4.5 (I find the section Surrender a little out of place and not as resonate as the others). many powerful, sometimes angry, poems about indigeneity and decolonization. in first two sections, steps into historical moments and peoples' lives to textualize their inner battles. those are themed around two sides of captivity narratives of women (both white captives or tribal person who took captives) and indigenous people put on exhibit in turn of the century world's fair. These are by far the most powerful of the collection, which concludes with poems that also employ these themes/forms. also deals with violence against women of color, infidelity and marriage, sexual identities. poet identifies as chicana/mestiza, and much of what is here draws on indigenous connection to those cultural/ethnic groups. also makes use of poet's time in Alaska by including two poems directly about Inuit peoples. very, very good.

[Lisha Adela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lisa D. Chavez is a brave poet. I wanted more from her... I wanted the juicy pomegranate juice of her narrative. The poems of the most umph were the stories from "Captivity" and "Poems of New World" sections. The weakest poems were the love poems with the exception of The Century Plant and Witches Lament. But there are lines that are so prosey and beg freshness. Ex. "As Autumn wanes to winter", "as storms seethe," and "I needed to draw you into my bed." There are also brilliant lines like:

" In the season of the hoar frost-- the earth
stiff as bone, in the season when the iced
grasses rattle in the clawing wind, then
they came."

Even prose poems need to manage images poetically and leave the reader breathless, paced and indeed richer. Lisa is a young poet and I look forward to reading her forthcoming works.

[Johanna DeBiase · Rating 5 out of 5]

In An Angry Season portrays beautiful and moving historic tales of people held in captivity either by others or their own fate. “A White Pony” is based on the story of Helen M. Tarble who was captured by Sioux Indians in 1862:
Those days are gone, even the language
discarded with the memories bitter
as ash. Sometimes still, I see myself astride
a white pony, a warrior’s bride. Impossible,
of course. Outside my window,
the sea fog moves like smoke,
spirits calling to me in a tongue
I refuse to understand.

[Mpho3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stark, raw narrative poetry about the oppressed in a "century/ of dishonor, suffering and pain." This book will lay your soul bare.

[Lisa Hase-Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chavez's stunning lyricism, apt metaphor, and gripping subject matter call to me again and again.