A Primer of the Obsolete

by Diane Glancy

This remarkable collection of poems explores the conjoined cultures of Indian and European, the revisions the conquered race must face, and the disruption that results from the attempt to combine divergent cultures in a single being. These poems speak from a four-cornered world; Cherokee and white, Christian and conjuring. They attempt to retrieve fragments of language from a nearly erased culture. At times, they speak in the spirit of the remembered language with the new language that is not fully formed in the understanding of the narrator. The poems have roots in history, religion, and illiteracy. They are inspired by folk artists who use materials and textures at hand - enamel and cornmeal on plywood, house paint on tar and tin, model airplane paint on corrugated scrap metal. The resulting lyrics walk the boundary between worlds, weaving remnants of the old way of viewing the world with pieces of the new world, such as a clapper that turns lights on and off. The experimental text revisits the gap between past and present. The past is just beneath a newly painted surface. The newly painted surface is not quite dry.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published May 30, 2004

About the author

(Helen) Diane Glancy is a Cherokee poet, author and playwright.

Glancy was born in 1941 in Kansas City, Missouri. She received her Bachelor of Arts (English literature) from the University of Missouri in 1964, then later continued her education at the University of Central Oklahoma, earning her a Masters degree in English in 1983. In 1988, she received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.

Glancy is an English professor and began teaching in 1989 at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, teaching Native American literature and creative writing courses. Glancy's literary works have been recognized and highlighted at Michigan State University in their Michigan Writers Series.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Sam Niemeyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diane Glancy is a notable and talented poet in the Native American writing canon. Personally, I am interested in postmodernism and Native American fiction, so Glancy was an obvious choice. Glancy is considered more obviously postmodern than Louise Erdrich, and purposefully plays with postmodernist comparisons of science, space, and traditional ideals. Her poetry is a good companion for comparing poetic forms in Native American poets who are considered postmodern.

My personal favorite passage is from A Wife: “Sometimes she felt waves pasting from the back./Sometimes she felt another woman standing at the stove.”

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have this edition. I have the one that Charles Alexander has sewn, or someone he knows has sewn the book together and boy is it wonderful. I read it while eating Chinese food and it was so good I had to tell the person that bought the Chinese food exactly how. It is good by steps, because glancy knows something about order and something about brevity and about the array of saying something through time. A pleasure to read it and have it and look at the way it was sewn.