Wishing Bone Cycle: Narrative Poems of the Swampy Cree Indians

by Howard Norman

poetry, tr Norman, w/scholarly essay

Genres: Poetry

275 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Howard A. Norman (born 1949), is an American award-winning writer and educator. Most of his short stories and novels are set in Canada's Maritime Provinces. He has written several translations of Algonquin, Cree, Eskimo, and Inuit folklore. His books have been translated into 12 languages.

Reviews

[nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have practically zero context for these Cree poems, which were supposedly transcribed in the 60s by Howard Norman and later subject to some controversy as to their authenticity. Inevitably, a translation like this (compiled by an Anglo writer claiming access) will be a mixture of Cree poetics and colonial fantasies about them; it seems that specialist scholars have found the ratio difficult to ascertain.

But, taken at face value, these poems are astonishing, a hoard of shifting nature images that respect no steady ontology, a trickster-figure's view of the world as a constant game of outfoxing, a kind of Krazy and Ignatz dynamic between creator and created.

[Eli Weinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly beautiful, especially the titular poem sequence. Comparable to Calvino's Invisible Cities or Pixar in its visual imagination. Animals, humans, words, objects and thoughts elide into each other. A distilled sense of wonder.

[Tamas O'Doughda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pleasant little collection of poems. They are at times humorous, at times pretty, at times repetitive, at times obscure, at times imaginative, and overall enjoyable. No great catharsis or intense rumination. Just a fun, if slight, journey into aural world-capturing.

[A.E. Reiff · Rating 4 out of 5]

With all the smart talk of anthropologists you'd think nobody would admit to being one outside a small circle of them. Can anyone escape their start, the journalist, filled with vacuous protocols become a novelist like Hillerman? Can the poet, terse in his packet become a novelist, the travel writer like Lawrence Millman (Last Places) become a poet, the anthropologist like Howard Norman a novelist? Are these tortured fictional characters merely himself? Barry Lopez and Charles Bowden stick to their genres of fiction-nonfiction and fiction where the only character is themselves, Barry Lopez jumping out and and in and out of his pickup truck in Desert Notes. Do they know something denied the rest, Kafka the zoologist, Stevens the anthropologist, Borges the philosopher?

NOTE; This review was linked at Google Books. More smart talk against anthropologists at Alien Knowing and the the Unknown http://humanbotany.blogspot.com/2009/...

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

i learned much about the folklore, tradition and humor of the cree people from this book. maybe it's hard to find (my friend derek lent it to me), but it's wonderful and worth tracking down for something a little different than the standard fiction fare.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first time it occurred to me that ethnographical work in translation was a fit poetics for American poetry was Howard Norman's beautiful, enigmatic translations from the Swampy Cree. Not clear to me why Jerome Rothenberg is credited above. It is Howard Norman!

[Derek Kimball · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes yes yes!

[Brent]

Our late friend, Jeremy, reads from Wishing Bone Cycle, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR2T4...