Corpse Whale

by dg nanouk okpik

A self-proclaimed “vessel in which stories are told from time immemorial,” poet dg nanouk okpik seamlessly melds both traditional and contemporary narrative, setting her apart from her peers. The result is a collection of poems that are steeped in the perspective of an Inuit of the twenty-first century—a perspective that is fresh, vibrant, and rarely seen in contemporary poetics.

Fearless in her craft, okpik brings an experimental, yet poignant, hybrid aesthetic to her first book, making it truly one of a kind. “It takes all of us seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling to be one,” she says, embodying these words in her work. Every sense is amplified as the poems, carefully arranged, pull the reader into their worlds. While each poem stands on its own, they flow together throughout the collection into a single cohesive body.

The book quickly sets up its own rhythms, moving the reader through interior and exterior landscapes, dark and light, and other spaces both ecological and spiritual. These narrative, and often visionary, poems let the lives of animal species and the power of natural processes weave into the human psyche, and vice versa.

Okpik’s descriptive rhythms ground the reader in movement and music that transcend everyday logic and open up our hearts to the richness of meaning available in the interior and exterior worlds.

Genres: Poetry, Indigenous, Folklore

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2012

Reviews

[Khadijah · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most brilliant books of poetry I've ever read.

[zero · Rating 5 out of 5]

im not very good at reading poetry yet, but this book rocked my world

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the structure of this book, which is organized around the Moon cycle of the Inuit/Inupiaq people. dg nanouk opik (no capital letters as she spells her name) organizes the volume around the Moons of the Inuit calendar, moving from the depths of winter through spring, summer and autumn, back to the deep darkness. Drawing on the figures of Raven and the Whale of the title, she focuses on the traditional stories of her people, while mixing in references to Christianity, especially the eucharist. A brief poem sketching the significance of each Moon is followed by a series of lyrics in which okpik reflects on the changing landscapes: natural, spiritual, cultural. Through she employs a linguistic gesture that stresses the interrelationship of the poet and the female shaman figure who guards the traditional wisdom: "She/I dream/s…"; She/I clamor/s…." Similarly, okpik uses a lot of Inuit words, providing a glossary in the back.

What keeps Corpse Whale from being a five star book for me is simply that there aren't enough lines or poems that *sing*. It may be that I'm not catching the rhythm of some of the poems, which are organized in long lines with a good deal of white space between phrases. I suspect it's meant to emphasize the tension between connection and disconnection, but it didn't work often for me. (And I'm not positive that's the right way to voice the lines.) Among the poems which worked best for me wet: "Ceprano Man" and a wonderful sequence, written as a prose poem, "For the Spirits-Who-Have-Not-Yet-Rounded-the-Bend."

I'll definitely keep her on the list of poets to follow.

[Aaron Esthelm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really connects to some impactful emotional roots of living off the land as well as being effected by American industrialization. With Oil mining and these colonizers moving in this way of life is all but gone and to connect to the emotion of it is really something meaningful. What a fantastic work.

[Christina Butcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started reading this book, I enjoyed the tone, style, and content very much. However, there wasn't enough variation in any of the above to enjoy the full collection. It felt a little "one-note" to me and I got tired of reading the same thing over and over. Although the author has a distinct voice, I would have liked more variety.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the she/I use/s a mace adze on nightmares”

Textures of making space & survival in a now that is both pre- & post-.

“Samna brings brother close enough to smell the blue ruin,
Yet far enough to build a castle made of tentacles.” (52)

"The fat covered membrane like a crystal ball

reveals the willows feed off toxic sea berries,

reveals the crack in the ice for the hunters

to avoid the trapline" (56)

I've been trying to describe what's so singular about okpik's languaging of ecological-cultural relations then remember she tells the reader right away in a epigraph to the collection which ends, "Buster Kailek, a Nunavet man once said, 'The greatest peril of life lies in the fact human food consists entirely of souls.'"

This fact is interated through the transformation of images of the self and other across sentences throughout. I read this insight and peril in lines that haunt like “While she’s/I’m paddling another floating corpse, / a spotted human pelt a narwhal is passing / a turquoise iceberg. Of plucked bones of ivory with spiral blood. stained ribbons // reduced to a single tusk. She/I passe/es” (65). Hopefully this gives you a taste of the intricacy of okpik’s poetics, in the construction of sort-of dual nouns and verbs, how the sentences turn. The speaker (“she/I”) of the poems isn’t someone w/the privilege of passively describing a landscape but, rather, often seems to actively navigating an ecology, densely layered relations, and becoming through that act.

& vivid renderings of personhood contouring its relations through technology: “I used a stone maul on my underground thoughts of you” (72).

A cannier reader could say more abt how this takes up Inuit and Inupiat identity. There’s threads here, too, on climate crisis, diaspora, corporate-colonialism. A marvelous book.

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corpse Whale is a striking collection of Alaskan Native poetry by up and coming poet dg nanouk okpik. The poems throughout the collection deal with the four concepts of the Peoplehood Matrix: land; ceremony; language; history. The use of native language throughout the poems allows non-native readers and insight into Inuit/Alaskan Native lifestyle that invites us to understand certain words, and at other times leaves us wanting more. There are many connections to the natural environment throughout, making this a wonderful piece for those interested in a content analysis.

Themes also include the roles of birthing, motherhood, elder years, ceremony, blood, and identity. There are also some significant discussions of how adoption can shape Indigenous identity: are you then born into and live in two separate worlds? or do perhaps you still have one identity that is just more unique?

There are also some great discussions of the negative side effects of globalization and a general lack of environmental concern, as seen through the way in which non-Natives treat the land. One of my favorite lines of poetry comes from "Ninilchik" and states, "Japanese fishing floats shatter, hovering / water glass the color of Coke bottles" (39). This is not the only moment where globalization is present, but it is definitely one of my favorite moments of the entire collection.

Definitely worth a read!

[Catherine Pikula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich in texture, image, and language. I loved the use of space on the page within this collection; it made the poems seem full of breath. The pronoun mash-up she/i was very intriguing but grew a bit tired by the end. I've never read anything quite like this.

My favorite poem might have been Under Erasure for its boldness and risk in experimentation with form and language.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brave, genre-bending work. These poems form a bridge of vivid imagery between okpik's western and native worlds, between myth and the corporate world, between the enduring land and modern forces that destroy it.Each poem is a story, creating a dream-like journey, a vivid and pulsing dance filled with color, life and sensory richness.

[M Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant poetry from a fascinating Inupiaq woman... Her imagery is evocative and emotional. Have to be in the mood for poetry, especially heavy stuff like this,,but I am so glad I read it.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grateful for this collection. It encapsulates an entire land so well.

[Sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the beginning of National Poetry Month 2022, I decided to read some of the poetry books I had acquired. I buy books at readings, friends give them to me, I read something by a poet and order the book (from my local, independent bookstore!). This was a book I ordered for myself after reading (and assigning to students) the poem “Tulunigraq: Something Like a Raven” from The Ecopoetry Anthology edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street (Trinity University Press, 2020). By the way, the students loved the poem as much as I do. If I were not teaching a survey course (for students who do not ordinarily read poetry), I could simply assign the entire book Corpse Whale, as it provides an almost hallucinogenic trip into another culture, a trip almost out of time and into a way of thinking about the human story in nature that is so very different from the story that Western culture is stuck in — the story that is destroying the planet. All the poems need to be read more than once, and it helps if you go online and find a recording of dg okpik reading her poems. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me. I can't shake the feeling that the author threw a bunch of words at the wall like wet spaghetti, and then wrote down the words that stuck.

If Oil Is Drilled in Bristol Bay
Why is it, in Bristol Bay, a sea cormorant
hovers, sings a two-fold song with a hinged cover

for a mouth, teeth set in sockets, with a hissing grind
of spikelets biting the air? Dip one.

The lips of vanished flames in lava coals
glow vermillion as an egg cracks. Dip two.

She/I feel/s a chimera leaving the eider duck. Dip three.
While still in the embryo, separating the body

from death she/I smell/s of arsenic, the Chugach Range
in unnatural bitterness. Why is it, man’s/woman’s nerve scarcely

stifled and sane, comes to prey? While they swoon
minerals of crude oil and sea spiders for tricking a way for gold.

Will they crawl around her/me, sink their eyeteeth in the sea,
ravaging the ecosphere and the ore gold for fuel. Drill.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do I explain how I liked this poetry? It's not an easy read by any means. Nikki Giovanni says that poetry is not so much read as navigated, and that is a great way to describe the experience of reading this book. If I hadn't grown up in Alaska, I would certainly have a different relationship with her words. It's just rare and deeply nostalgic for me to see these uniquely alaskan words, landscapes, and particular ancient magic mingling as art on the page.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

okpik’s writing is rich, colourful, authentic; it is at times overwhelmingly intense, especially with its intentional disconnection from the reader.

I could not fully settle with this collection because of that, but the collection was very thought-provoking, and I think the continued usage of gemstone descriptions for the land was striking and meaningful in how we should be treating our environment.

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

We lying in the onyx rain by garnet-cloaking icebergs.

We watch on jet spires polar bears
hunting snowdrift urchin of Inuit

then edged puffin on bluffs with nests

filled with ruby eggs of egrets

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

STORYTELLER. Nebulous and awe filling.

::

The poems were challenging for me at first because the text roots in Inuit language, landscapes and traditions, but continuing to sit with and go deeper into these poems yielded so much. Deep gratitude for these poems. The craft is so visual and visceral. Highly recommend. Excited to read more from this series!

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Blackfish parr, swimmer of freshwater—
urn of eggs pocketed in rocks,
swimmer flow past in this moon—
for you, brackish season's leap.
So it is, you breathe quantum lux
and return, return, and return."

'Salt Cedar on Kokonee at Susitna River'

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. It really made me think about how we look at the world from inside the world we have made, the world the culture we have grown around is made. The poet paints a picture of a world I’m not familiar with - but I learned from, because of the poems. I am grateful.

[Heather Dunnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a poem for each month within this so I decided to spread this out throughout the year and only read between sections per month and waiting for the next installment became one of my favourite things and these were worth the wait every time

[Queer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new place for me but an old world to be acquainted with.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I knew more about the Inuit and their beliefs I promise would have gotten more of it

[birdbassador · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't quite get what the author was doing with tense and personhood and space but that is because I am not very bright.

[Oli · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazingly transportive and captivating series of poems conveying a world that is so inherently distant and different yet so violently real.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roaming and thoughtful, okpik's poetry here works with and, in some cases, against tradition.

[Jenni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not well versed enough in Inupiat - Inuit culture, or in poetry more broadly, to have fully jived with this, but that is ok!

[Liz • りず · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The seal talked to me with sharp eyes in my dream...It is then I answer the coal seal
eyes with throat song, standing on one strong foot in dance with white gloves."
🦭🐦‍⬛❄️

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was unlike any poetry I've ever read. It was slow and haunting and made me homesick for the tundra of my childhood.

[Glennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very creative. I think I could have used an artists statement or more context to better understand the purpose of the pieces.

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

TLDR: deliberately force yourself to take your time reading this or you may miss a lot.

This is a collection of poetry that I feel strongly deserves to have an audio format. There were several poems I had a difficult time reading, which very well may have been the intent, and I feel a reading of those specific poems would have deepened my understanding of them. These poems feel like they need to have much thought placed in their reading, to really get at the marrow. Take your time with this for full enjoyment.