Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry

by Dean Rader (Editor), Janice Gould (Editor)

Although American Indian poetry is widely read and discussed, few resources have been available that focus on it critically. This book is the first collection of essays on the genre, bringing poetry out from under the shadow of fiction in the study of Native American literature. Speak to Me Words is a stimulating blend of classic articles and original pieces that reflect the energy of modern American Indian literary studies. Highlighting various aspects of poetry written by American Indians since the 1960s, it is a wide-ranging collection that balances the insights of Natives and non-Natives, men and women, old and new voices. Included here are such landmark articles as "Answering the Deer" by Paula Gunn Allen, "Herbs of Healing" by Carter Revard, and "Song, Poetry and Language—Expression and Perception" by Simon Ortiz—all pieces that have shaped how we think about Native poetry. Among the contributions appearing for the first time are Elaine Jahner writing on Paula Gunn Allen's use of formal structures; Robert Nelson addressing pan-Indian tropes of emergence, survival, return, and renewal; and Janet McAdams focusing on Carter Revard's "angled mirrors." Although many Native writers may disregard distinctions between genres, together these writings help readers see the difference between American Indian poetry and other forms of Native literature. These essays are as broad, encompassing, and provocative as Native poetry itself, branching off from and weaving back into one another. In showing how American Indian poetry redefines our social order and articulates how Indian communities think about themselves, these writers establish a new foundation for the study—and enjoyment—of this vital art.

Genres: Indigenous, Poetry

294 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Dean Rader has authored or co-authored thirteen books. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His 2014 collection Landscape Portrait Figure Form was named by The Barnes & Noble Review as a Best Poetry Book. Other titles include the poetry collection Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and the anthologies Native Voices: Contemporary Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations and Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.

Rader writes and reviews regularly for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, BOMB, Ploughshares, Artforum, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, where he co-authors a poetry column with Victoria Chang. In 2020, he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award. In 2022, he began the popular video series, "Poems that Changed Me."

His most recent collection of poems, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, was named by Bookriot as one of ten “mesmerizing” books of modern poetry. Rader’s writing has been supported by fellowships from Princeton University, Harvard University, the MacDowell Foundation, Art Omi, and The Headlands Center for the Arts. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and a professor at the University of San Francisco.

Reviews

[Kristen Suagee-beauduy]

Excerpts:

Introduction:

"Failing to recognize the existence of genres is equivalent to claiming that a literary work does not bear any relationship to already existing works. Genres are precisely those relay-points by which the work assumes a relation with the universe of literature" --Tzvetan Todorov (3).

"There is no genre of 'Indian Literature' because we are all different. There is only literature written by people who are Indian and who, therefor, infuse their work with their own lives the same way you do." --Wendy Rose (3).

"In a 1987 article, Joseph Bruchac lists four 'shared understandings' of Native American poetry. There are (in abbreviated form)
1. Traditions of respect for the Earth and the Natural world.
2. An awareness of a strong tribal/folk culture which has been transmitted to them either by family or learned through continued personal seeking.
3. Respect for the awesome power of the Word. Power which can quite literally make or destroy, break or heal.
4. The awareness that English, even if they have grown up with it and mastered it, even if they have little or no practical knowledge of their original tribal language, is a different language for them than it is for the average 'American' writer" (8).

Janice Gould: "one function of American Indian poetry has been to 'resist cultural erasure,' to question the dominant narrative, and to remember our histories clearly as a way to resist both amnesia and nostalgia" (10).

Robert Nelson identifies pan-Indian "tropes of emergence, survival, return, and renewal" (16).

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

an insightful collection of essays on topics and poets writing from a native american perspective. some of these should really be required reading for all american literature courses.

[Patricia Killelea · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gould's "Poems as Maps . . . " - very good shit.