Hyperboreal

by Joan Naviyuk Kane

Winner of the 2012 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry
Selected by Arthur Sze

Hyperboreal originates from diasporas. It attempts to make sense of change and to prepare for cultural, climate, and political turns that are sure to continue. The poems originate from the hope that our lives may be enriched by the expression of and reflection on the cultural strengths inherent to indigenous culture. It concerns King Island, the ancestral home of the author's family until the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs forcibly and permanently relocated its residents. The poems work towards the assembly of an identity, both collective and singular, that is capable of looking forward from the recollection and impact of an entire community's relocation to distant and arbitrary urban centers. Through language, Hyperboreal grants forum to issues of displacement, lack of access to traditional lands and resources and loss of family that King Island people—and all Inuit—are contending with.

Genres: Poetry, Indigenous, Native Americans, Short Stories

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Joan Naviyuk Kane is an Inupiaq American poet. She is 2014 Indigenous Writer-in-Residence at the School for Advanced Research.

Joan Kane is Inupiaq Eskimo, with family from King Island and Mary's Igloo, Alaska. She graduated from Harvard College and from Columbia University with an M.F.A.

She lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband and sons.

Reviews

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very spare, haunting, and demanding of attention--much more deliberate about craft than some other things I've been reading lately. These poems are lovely on the page. They are often quite challenging and also stunningly beautiful. I often felt like I didn't know quite what to make of what I had just read, but I was left with these really crystalline images, startling word choices.

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joan Naviyuk Kane is a master of syntactical subversion and sneaky stunning prosody.

This is a fantastic collection one could get fully lost in.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arnica nods heavy-headed on the bruised slope.
Peaks recede in all directions, in heat-haze,
Evening in my recollection.

The shield at my throat ornamental and worse.
We descended the gully thrummed into confusion
With the last snowmelt a tricklet into mud, ulterior--

One wolfbane bloom, iodine-hued, rising on its stalk
Into the luster of air: June really isn't June anymore,
Is it? A glacier's heart of milk loosed from a thousand

Summer days in extravagant succession,
From the back of my tongue, dexterous and sinister.

"Hyperboreal"

I cannot for the life of me remember which poet or critic or article recommended Joan Naviyuk Kane's poetry--but I thank the party all the same. Hyperboreal is oddly satisfying, emotionally. As the opening poem quoted above notes, we descend into its depth "thrummed into confusion."

Kane has a deft control of image and mood, the enviable ability to always choose the unexpected yet perfect word. I never felt I couldn't read her poetry; I never felt I couldn't feel her poetry, either: I just couldn't fully comprehend her poetry. Kane isn't writing an autobiography nor is she simply ranting about the plight of her people. While there are hints of both within the work, the meaning drifts like snow over the bedrock. Kane's poetry requires slow, careful, repeated readings--and is immensely rewarding when approached with an open mind not focused on understanding "what it means."

At the rim of the world, the aching world,
a fault of snow and shadow.
She predicts sense yet I find none:
nothing, in fact, but the edges of things,
in wind and the movement of animals.

Through dreams inlaid with rigid marrow
at last I grew to grasp her fear:
it was to have been a survivor
when there were no others.
Between my dreams, the net of them,

light breaks above an oyster midden
as one day yokes itself to another.
She could not be farther--
somewhere near the mingled voices
of boys as they gather rocks for slingshots.

Hers a force as vital as my own disgrace:
the pulse of it plays back at me.
There is no final story,
no assertion, no deception.
I may never know who I am.

I splint the stem broken in recurrence
from leaning so many times,
and smother the roots in sand.
The shoot shifts ever toward the light.

On Either Side

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the type of book I'd want to carry around with me on walks. To be able to turn to and open in the out of doors. This is the kind of book I have no choice but to keep because it begs to be read and re-read and re-read. I don't remember who recommended Kane to me originally, but to that person: thank you.

[yk · Rating 5 out of 5]

cannot enthuse about joan naviyuk kane’s work enough— the first poem i read from her was “rookeries” (which isn’t in this collection) for my native american lit class, and after that i took every opportunity to write about her poems in my assignments for that course. was absolutely delighted to find this whole book on the uni ebook database; the rawness, the way she writes about landscape, is unforgettable and nothing like i’ve ever read before. i only regret not attending her (virtual) live reading that my professor invited us to (because said professor was also live reading in that event, but still).

[Abby Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous gorgeous chefs kiss

[Lisa Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The words in this thin book are spare and so carefully chosen. I was sent back to the dictionary six or ten times. There's a great deal of mystery on these spacious pages, yet the poet is specific and elemental. Reading this one is a magical experience, highly recommended.

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sparse lines and mostly one-page long, these poems unfold an entire world, richly layered, clear-eyed, unsparing, and lyrical at once, in English and at times Inupiaq. The boundary between the speaker's self and the landscape blurs, and the speaker's love for this landscape, its language, is deep. Reading is being immersed into it and not wanting to leave.

[Marija]

Siobhan’s review hit the nail on the head. I often didn’t know what, exactly, was going on on the page. A story could be pieced together with multiple readings but it also didn’t matter. The word choice, the images, the sounds, all sparing, haunting, resplendent. Like gazing at an impressionist painting or a prism refracting shades of dark blue, black, white, purple, and blood red. Beautiful.

[Libby Rhodes · Rating 3 out of 5]

not my absolute fav style of poetry, but still profound. favorite poem is in long light

i am reading a bunch of indigenous alaskan poetry books for work to pick out poems for a lesson plan on poetry as an essential tool in a resistance movement

[Irisis Miranda Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved it!

[l · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a house apart, disappearer, love poem, on either side, king island

[Marlena Giannone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such moving imagery and strong emotion.

[Mia]

Ugiuvak/King Island; The Dissolve of Voices; Ivory, Stomach, Bone; On Either Side;

[Regine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Icy clarity of vision, bleak and beautiful. Both memorable and elusive.

[Zoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was some beautiful, stark imagery in this collection, but the (sometimes literal) gaps in knowledge/context made it clear it wasn't written for me.

[Shannon]

Faves:
- Mugnatuilana/I am not tired
- The Dissolve of Voices
- Fugato (2)
- On Either Side
- In Long Light
- Looking Through
- Procession
- Nunaqtigiit

[John Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Hyperboreal" is one of my favorite books of 2013. I've revisited and again revisited many of its poems over the past year and a half. Structurally simple yet strangely complex, there's something mystical about Kane's work. She has a way of speaking simultaneously of a specific landscape and all of nature, of a certain group of people enduring their specific hardships and all people. Her plainspoken, worldly images reveal something elusive yet significant about human endurance. I could not more strongly recommend "Hyperboreal" to poetry readers of all tastes, from narrative to abstract, visual and sonic.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barebones and haunting, Joan Naviyuk Kane evokes the resilience of indigenous culture and the fragments of the natural world and the past forced to confront urban modernity. So much of this book sits with me after the first reading, which is rare for that is so evocation but also eschewing narrative. Highly recommended.

[lillianreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful and haunting poetry about life as an Indigenous woman in Alaska, loss, grief, motherhood, natural beauty, and struggle

read for an Indigenous Literature of Alaska and Hawai’i class

trigger/content warnings!:grief, misogyny

[Margarita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful words.

[Erika · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, but the poems didn't resonate with me. The writing is beautiful, dense, obtuse and fractured.