Fire Power

by Chrystos

Telling the truth is powerful medicine. It is a fire that lights the way for others. When we speak our "Fire Power," we join a long & honored line of warriors against injustice.

Genres: Poetry, Indigenous, Queer, LGBT, Lesbian, Disability, Disability Studies

131 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Chrystos is a Menominee writer and two-spirit activist who has published various books and poems that explore indigenous Americans's civil rights, social justice, and feminism. Chrystos is also a lecturer, writing teacher and fine-artist.

Reviews

[Tallon Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chrystos-- oh, Chrystos. Her poems are so beautifully crafted and she writes with a fire against the occupation of indigenous lands, situating her Two-Spirited love as a resistance to settler-colonialism. She also writes through a lot of her own personal traumas here, including both parental abuse and mental institutionalization. One of the most beautiful and painful poems in this book is one in which she recalls some of the friends she made in the psych ward, in one case a lover, recounting the abuses they endured, wondering where they are now, and writing that these womens' love for one another became further proof that they were "crazy." Incredible collection of poetry. A-

[SJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book is almost as old as I am and was on my tbr for almost six years, after I first came across some of her work in the 1980s feminist WOC collection This Bridge Called My Back. This is now one of my favourite poetry books. The author writes about queer and lesbian love, joy, sex, and breakups, as well as feminist topics. There's also many very direct poems about difficult topics, including family abuse; her own history of childhood sexual abuse and institutionalisation as well as systemic racism and genocide.

Some of my favourite poems from this book include: Going Into the Prison, ITCOTU, Bitter as the Pockmarked Streets, Here's the Ruthless Edge, Done the Time, Hell Calls Me Up, Sometimes I Can't Stand to Look, There's a Razor, This Whale Card, Simplicity, She Didn't Want, Bete Noire Mama, Riding in Your Sidekick, For Stephen, I Scar Myself, and Back Road.

I feel like Gathering Words best sums up this collection:

"Poetry is the song of the people, not the painted bird of the academic machine. My most treasured response from listeners is, "I hate poetry, but I love yours!" This means that I have attained the sacred goal of writing & relationship-to communicate. My audiences are my allies in this war, a war in which all of us are victims, as all of us are colonized, although it is much harder to feel the war when we are far from the front & comfortably watching TV nonsense after a good meal.This book holds many pieces of my personal struggle for survival from a violent, alcoholic family, & my subsequent imprisonments in psychiatric wards over a period of 10 years. My last incarceration was in January 1975. Writing this has helped me cauterize many old wounds & I hope it is useful to others who share this grief. I know well how common my experience has been. In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretense in which we live. Telling the truth is powerful medicine. It is a fire that lights the way for others. [...] Do not bother to feel guilty if your life may seem less difficult than mine. Use your ease to make the lives of others easier. As I have, as many women & men & children have, you can make your life a weapon against exploitation. It does not matter that we may not win our war to save our mother. It matters that we fight honorably for her. Those who rape her, who rape us, have no souls. In fighting them, we preserve our own. Poetry is a great force for healing, as Pat Parker first showed me many years ago. We are bombarded daily to ignore our true wounds. The mainstream media direct our focus on trivia, noise & tragedies about which wecan do nothing (which cleverly increases our feeling of helplessness). My prayer is that these fragments of my battle to become whole & sane (still ongoing) will fire you to discover your power, which is often misunderstood in western syphilization. Each of us is born with innate power & purpose, a sacred direction for which we have been created. Our task is to find the place where we belong & do our work there. We struggle against a vast conspiracy designed to rob us of that power & redirect our energies into maintaining the corporate consumer state for the profits of the rich. Power is most dangerous when it is used against others; like bullets, it has a habit of ricocheting. I recommend that you give as much time as you can to being silently reflective on our brainwashing, to writing or creating your arsenal."

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chrystos--Native American, lesbian, and political poet--packs a lot of power and fire into this collection. She positions herself against the status quo, whether it exists in hierarchies of economics, academics, race, gender, and sexuality, and her position is evident in content as well as style. For an example of content, some of her titles provide a clue: "Going Into the Prison," "Bitter as the Pockmarked Streets," "The Man Who Had a Lobotomy," "Unsettling Poetry," "Hissing He Called Me a Witch," "Worrying About How to Pay All My Bills," "Why Indian Unemployment is So High," and "Crazy Horse."

As for style, many of her poems read like lineated prose--casual, conversation-like, which I take to be a critique of stylized and elitist language in poetry. Almost all of her poems lack punctuation aside from the occasional comma, creating a murmuring effect reminiscent of Lucille Clifton. My favorite poem of this collection, "Crazy Horse," an apostrophe to Crazy Horse occasioned while ironing a Crazy-Horse-brand shirt, twice omits syntactical markers ("I could dampen this shirt with my tears / I could burn for hours before your name / still not cleanse this hatred" and "Names are sacred / they know that / Their copyright laws hungry with it") for an effect that's emotive, not coolly rational.

Overall, I enjoy the book for its style and its content, and for its "hell yeah!" qualities--for the way that simply articulating some awful stuff is a kind of triumph over oppression. However, I have mixed feelings about the short essay that ends the collection, "Gathering Words." At one point, she writes, "A long time ago, a famous writer told me that my poem 'I Walk in the History of My People' was not poetry because it was too political. I assert that poetry without politics is narcissistic & not useful to us. I also believe that everything is political--there is no neutral, safe place we can hide out in waiting for the brutality to go away." Yes: everything is political, including unconscious habits that enable, reproduce, and perpetuate oppression. (For example, a recent issue of Cosmo provides an example of women sitting back from the table at a business meeting, reluctant to move forward--maintaining a posture of passivity, submission.) But I don't think poetry's first responsibility should be political; poetry's first responsibility should be poetry, craft; after that, let it do whatever it does. Let the audience read the politics into it.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

as always, chrystos gives you the gutpunch of viewing this world's fuckery with sharp clarity, and the huge vastness of the embrace of queer love & comradeship. the poem they dedicated to mab segrest made me bust out crying at the possibilities of closeness and care and patience across these huge gulfs of power & violence in our names as white women. the hugeness of compassion chrystos has, while holding to their righteous anger. they floor me & i am in awe & so grateful for the mirror they hold to me.

[trae banuelos-rovaris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chrystos has such a powerful domination over words. This book is one I feel that can remind those of us who have experienced trauma our agency. We can and are surviving.

Their words are poignant and strong. Take your time with this and let it sit next to you.

[Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chrystos is a Native American activist and poet. Her poems are raw expressions of pain, healing and survival. They touch personal and political relms and are awe-inspiring in many ways.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

potent poetry. there is some good stuff in here. just be ready for some evocative and sexy language.

[~Ivy~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

vulnerable, powerful, political

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry that is sharp because of it's timelessness.
cutting through to the truth of ourselves
I love the use of queer language.

[Alyse Knorr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chrystos is an absolute legend, and these poems clearly demonstrate why. Her fierce, funny, and deeply wise voice tackles America’s most pressing social injustices with an invaluable intersectional perspective. This book is a classic!

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not gonna lie, I disagreed with Chrystos about half the time in Fire Power and still couldn't stop reading. That's rare. The argument is bold, a little half-baked in places, and way more fun than a careful book would've been. Pick it up if you like a good fight, skip it if you want balance.

[Queer · Rating 5 out of 5]

She has been raped. They have been raped. The land has been raped. This is also passive.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible range of poems in this book!!

[Lio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crushingly intimate.

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fire Power proves that Chrystos understands the art of psychological leverage better than most political strategists working today.

[Holly · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Reviewed: https://hollograms.blogspot.com/2020/...