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When My Brother Was an Aztec
A fast-paced debut that draws upon reservation folklore, pop culture, fractured gospels, and her brother’s addiction to methamphetamine
119 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 10, 2012
253 people are currently reading
9314 people want to read
About the author
Natalie Díaz
31 books574 followersNatalie Díaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. Her second poetry collection, Postcolonial Love Poems is published by Graywolf Press in 2020. She is 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, a Hodder Fellowship, and a PEN/Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, as well as being awarded a US Artists Ford Fellowship. Díaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 595 reviews
December 18, 2013
Whew. The confidence in this poetry collection is impressive. The work here takes on race and identity and poverty and popular culture. There is also a lot of interesting commentary on the body, how it bleeds, how it fails, how it endures. A truly striking collection.
February 10, 2021
Identity, family, popular culture, violence, love. All the elements in this book are great, very intense poems. Loved it!
April 5, 2018
When My Brother Was an Aztec is a debut poetry collection. The poems are vivid with language, family history, cultural struggle, and struggles in the body.
Before I wrote this review, I spent almost an hour watching Natalie perform her poems and talk about her poems and life on YouTube. It was interesting to hear her talk about her work to help her people retain the Mojave language, and her family's reactions to her poems. She writes about her brother's meth addiction in particular, and its effect on her family and community.
Some of my favorites:
When My Brother Was an Aztec
"he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents
every morning...."
Why I Hate Raisins
The Red Blues (possibly the best menstruation poem ever!)
Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis
"...Some tortillas wandered the dry ground
like bright tribes.."
As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs
"...-- we are always digging each other out from an intimate
sort of rubble --..."
When the Beloved Asks, "What Would You Do If You Woke Up and I Was a Shark?"
Before I wrote this review, I spent almost an hour watching Natalie perform her poems and talk about her poems and life on YouTube. It was interesting to hear her talk about her work to help her people retain the Mojave language, and her family's reactions to her poems. She writes about her brother's meth addiction in particular, and its effect on her family and community.
Some of my favorites:
When My Brother Was an Aztec
"he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents
every morning...."
Why I Hate Raisins
The Red Blues (possibly the best menstruation poem ever!)
Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis
"...Some tortillas wandered the dry ground
like bright tribes.."
As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs
"...-- we are always digging each other out from an intimate
sort of rubble --..."
When the Beloved Asks, "What Would You Do If You Woke Up and I Was a Shark?"
April 28, 2018
A book so lush it left me drunk. Serious, painful poems about the narrator's relationship with her drug-addicted brother. Poems of passion and longing. Poems riffing off works by Lorca and Rimbaud. A clever commentary on our paranoid post-9/11 world in which oranges become the new vehicles of evil.
The power of red, the sensual attraction of apples. The knots of family love.
These poems contain so much and examine with great intensity love that sometimes borders on hate, on feelings that seem to great for a human to contain.
Fabulous work.
The power of red, the sensual attraction of apples. The knots of family love.
These poems contain so much and examine with great intensity love that sometimes borders on hate, on feelings that seem to great for a human to contain.
Fabulous work.
December 5, 2019
Like the cover, colorful. Natalie Díaz does the imagery thing extremely well. It's a rich dish, this book, and her brother is metaphorically sacrificed, like so many young people these days, to drugs (in his case, meth, which I guess involves lightbulbs somehow). Family, the body, love, race, and a few other big honking themes included. Worth a look!
November 23, 2019
Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups,
we're better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
'xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens.
You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they'll be marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they've mapped out for us.
Some people just seem to live a lot of life; it has little to do with age, and everything to do with experience.
For example: Natalie Diaz is a former professional basketball player-turned-poet, teacher, and MFA holder. She is Mojave, an enrolled member of the Gila Indian Community, and has done important work on language revitalization with her home tribe. She is a speaker of English, a speaker of Spanish, a speaker of Mojave, and I'd guess—given that she played basketball for several years in Europe and Asia—others too. If her poetry is autobiographical, which it seems to be, she is also a woman who loves women, and the sister to a brother addicted to methamphetamine.
On top of all that, Diaz is gifted with a well-tuned ear for words and a talent for transforming memories and sensory impressions into striking poetic images.
As you might expect, given that background, When My Brother Was an Aztec sees Diaz putting her linguistic and artistic skills to great use interpreting the many sides of her multifaceted identity: fitting them together, pulling them apart, adjusting her angle of approach. Her poems are often intimate and physical, closely attuned to the sensations of individual bodies, but they're also always zooming out, giving those bodies a context in history and space. Her style is experimental but never to the point of incomprehensibility, weaving bits of Spanish and Mojave and symbols from Lorca, Borges, and others in between her own reminiscences and confessions.
This book is a pretty long one as far as contemporary poetry collections go—forty poems compiled, I'm sure, from many individual pieces and clusters—and there's inevitably some repetition and reiteration. It's also (understandably) quite bleak: almost overwhelmingly so at times, and all the more for its length. But neither of those are marks against its quality, and there are definite moments of humor, acidic though it may be, as well.
There’s much more that could be said about When My Brother Was an Aztec, but for all its multitudes I find that it's a difficult book to talk about. Maybe that’s not unusual; poetry, even more than other forms, tends to speak best for itself. With that in mind, then, give Aztec a try. If you listen to what Diaz has to say, I’m confident you’ll find it worth your time.
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups,
we're better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
'xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens.
You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they'll be marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they've mapped out for us.
Some people just seem to live a lot of life; it has little to do with age, and everything to do with experience.
For example: Natalie Diaz is a former professional basketball player-turned-poet, teacher, and MFA holder. She is Mojave, an enrolled member of the Gila Indian Community, and has done important work on language revitalization with her home tribe. She is a speaker of English, a speaker of Spanish, a speaker of Mojave, and I'd guess—given that she played basketball for several years in Europe and Asia—others too. If her poetry is autobiographical, which it seems to be, she is also a woman who loves women, and the sister to a brother addicted to methamphetamine.
On top of all that, Diaz is gifted with a well-tuned ear for words and a talent for transforming memories and sensory impressions into striking poetic images.
As you might expect, given that background, When My Brother Was an Aztec sees Diaz putting her linguistic and artistic skills to great use interpreting the many sides of her multifaceted identity: fitting them together, pulling them apart, adjusting her angle of approach. Her poems are often intimate and physical, closely attuned to the sensations of individual bodies, but they're also always zooming out, giving those bodies a context in history and space. Her style is experimental but never to the point of incomprehensibility, weaving bits of Spanish and Mojave and symbols from Lorca, Borges, and others in between her own reminiscences and confessions.
This book is a pretty long one as far as contemporary poetry collections go—forty poems compiled, I'm sure, from many individual pieces and clusters—and there's inevitably some repetition and reiteration. It's also (understandably) quite bleak: almost overwhelmingly so at times, and all the more for its length. But neither of those are marks against its quality, and there are definite moments of humor, acidic though it may be, as well.
There’s much more that could be said about When My Brother Was an Aztec, but for all its multitudes I find that it's a difficult book to talk about. Maybe that’s not unusual; poetry, even more than other forms, tends to speak best for itself. With that in mind, then, give Aztec a try. If you listen to what Diaz has to say, I’m confident you’ll find it worth your time.
February 7, 2017
Feverish, funny, serious, sensual poems. This collection has TEETH. Whether Díaz is writing about reservation life, her brother's drug addiction, or lovers' jealousy, she ties in themes of conquering and being conquered, of ecstasy and despair, of living the color red (internally and externally). And her phrasing regularly took my breath away. Perfect both for poetry lovers (who'll get more of the allusions than I did) and for those intimidated by poetry (like me).
October 12, 2020
Such a strong debut! This is one of my favorites in my month of poetry reads.
This book has stayed with me in the days since I read it, and it begs for a re-read.
This book has stayed with me in the days since I read it, and it begs for a re-read.
November 15, 2021
Genuinely some of the most impassioned, cutting, and intense writing I have experienced in years.
July 14, 2012
Natalie Diaz, Conjurer
Poetry as turgid with metaphors, as disturbing, raw, and, a veces, humorous and sly and naughty doesn't happen often, but in this collection WHEN MY BROTHER WAS AN AZTEC Natalie Diaz manages to travel this bumpy terrain with such a sure hand that the result is staggering. Perhaps a part of the intensity of her writing is that as a woman born and raised on an Indian Reservation - and that, without parody intended, is why she writes like a necromancer, an augurer, a sorceress - a conjurer. This poet sees/feels/defines life in a situation close to her so well that she makes her reader finish a poem ad immediately return to the top of the poem to make sure it is fully digested before moving on to the next experience. Read Natalie Diaz and understand life on a reservation.
ABECEDARIAN REQUIRING FURTHER EXAMINATION OF ANGLIKAN SERAPHYM SUBJUGATION OF A WILD INDIAN REZERVATION
Angel's don't come to the reservation.
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing -
death. And death
eats angels, I guess, because I haven't seen an angel
fly trough this valley ever.
Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a Gabe though -
he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical
Indian. Sure he had wings,
jailbird that he was. He flies around In stolen cars. Wherever he stops,
kids grow like gourds from women's bellies.
Like I said, no Indian I've ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.
Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something -
Nazarene church holds one every December,
organized by Pastor John's wife. It's no wonder
Pastor John's son is the angel - everybody knows angels are white.
Quit bothering with angels, I say. They're no good for Indians.
Remember what happened last some white god came floating across the ocean?
Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey form silver cups,
we're better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
`zactly where they are - in their own distant heavens.
You better nope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they'll be
marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they've mapped out for us.
The title of this collection suggests that we are going to hear a lot about Diaz' brother, and we do. A fragment of a longer poem follows:
3. aka delusional parasitosis
Dope is what my dad calls it. He never says meth.
And the dope always has my brother. It's that dope,
my dad sighs, that dope's got him.
My dad once took us to the railroad tracks,
gave each of his nine kids a penny to set on the rusted rails.
My brother wanted a dollar, not a penny.
Because it's hard to turn a firstborn son away, he got it,
shoved it down into his pocket, walked away from us.
We placed our pennies along the rails he balanced on,
his heels squeaked against the metal, arm stretched
out on each side. I knew that he'd do it. He'd crucify himself
one day, just like that day - arms nailed to a horizon of salt cedars,
date palms, the purple mountains behind him sharp as needles.
These two samples, seductive though they are, represent only a glimpse at the wealth of philosophy and poetry and social comment that lies within. Natalie Diaz is a poet to heed, to read, to remember, to follow. Brilliant!
Grady Harp
Poetry as turgid with metaphors, as disturbing, raw, and, a veces, humorous and sly and naughty doesn't happen often, but in this collection WHEN MY BROTHER WAS AN AZTEC Natalie Diaz manages to travel this bumpy terrain with such a sure hand that the result is staggering. Perhaps a part of the intensity of her writing is that as a woman born and raised on an Indian Reservation - and that, without parody intended, is why she writes like a necromancer, an augurer, a sorceress - a conjurer. This poet sees/feels/defines life in a situation close to her so well that she makes her reader finish a poem ad immediately return to the top of the poem to make sure it is fully digested before moving on to the next experience. Read Natalie Diaz and understand life on a reservation.
ABECEDARIAN REQUIRING FURTHER EXAMINATION OF ANGLIKAN SERAPHYM SUBJUGATION OF A WILD INDIAN REZERVATION
Angel's don't come to the reservation.
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing -
death. And death
eats angels, I guess, because I haven't seen an angel
fly trough this valley ever.
Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a Gabe though -
he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical
Indian. Sure he had wings,
jailbird that he was. He flies around In stolen cars. Wherever he stops,
kids grow like gourds from women's bellies.
Like I said, no Indian I've ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.
Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something -
Nazarene church holds one every December,
organized by Pastor John's wife. It's no wonder
Pastor John's son is the angel - everybody knows angels are white.
Quit bothering with angels, I say. They're no good for Indians.
Remember what happened last some white god came floating across the ocean?
Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey form silver cups,
we're better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
`zactly where they are - in their own distant heavens.
You better nope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they'll be
marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they've mapped out for us.
The title of this collection suggests that we are going to hear a lot about Diaz' brother, and we do. A fragment of a longer poem follows:
3. aka delusional parasitosis
Dope is what my dad calls it. He never says meth.
And the dope always has my brother. It's that dope,
my dad sighs, that dope's got him.
My dad once took us to the railroad tracks,
gave each of his nine kids a penny to set on the rusted rails.
My brother wanted a dollar, not a penny.
Because it's hard to turn a firstborn son away, he got it,
shoved it down into his pocket, walked away from us.
We placed our pennies along the rails he balanced on,
his heels squeaked against the metal, arm stretched
out on each side. I knew that he'd do it. He'd crucify himself
one day, just like that day - arms nailed to a horizon of salt cedars,
date palms, the purple mountains behind him sharp as needles.
These two samples, seductive though they are, represent only a glimpse at the wealth of philosophy and poetry and social comment that lies within. Natalie Diaz is a poet to heed, to read, to remember, to follow. Brilliant!
Grady Harp
November 12, 2017
This is one of my favourite all-time poetry collections, one I've read many times and often share poems from it with students. I love how Diaz combines the mythic with the sharp realities of her Mojave family life – uncomfortable but luxurious, vibrant and tragic, erotic and linguistically baroque. If I could give it ten stars I would. I can't wait for her next book and have seen samples published in various magazines that promise it will be even better.
February 11, 2024
Read this book when it first came out, and have been thinking about it again today, thinking about the influence it has had since I first read it.
Here's a short thing I wrote a few years ago:
One of the most interesting poetry debuts of the last few years has been that of Natalie Diaz. Part of the interest in her is certainly because of a compelling personal story. Diaz grew up on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation along the Colorado River. Her father was Spanish and her mother Native. After studying on the east coast and playing basketball professionally in Europe, she returned for graduate school and then a job working to revitalize the Mojave language. Much of this cultural information informs her poems and gives those of us who know little about it a glimpse into a rich history.
That cultural material and her family’s story also give the poems a deep sense of urgency. None of these poems feel frivolous. Although there are genuine moments of vision and humor in her first book, When My Brother Was an Aztec, there is also a very real anger. The title poem, which turns her brother’s drug addiction into a horrifying vision of the family he has damaged, begins: “He lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents / every morning. It was awful. Unforgivable. But they kept coming / back for more. They loved him, was all they could say.” Her brother’s addiction also becomes the telling image of the losses the Mojave people have suffered, even as it remains the tragic story of one man.
Diaz’s background, education, and reading have given her a broad range of reference. The brother becomes an Aztec god, “Huitzilopochtli, a god, half-man, half-hummingbird.” But more local myths and stories come in, too, as well as Christian and Greek mythology. Her literary references also move across cultures, from the Bible and the Koran to Spanish proverbs, Rimbaud, Whitman, Lorca, Borges, and a whole group of quieter references. This poet stretches all across the world to find the languages that can tell the story she needs to tell.
Diaz doesn’t find any easy answers to her devastating story. She doesn’t presume to say that love will be the answer for pain, even when she writes about the love she has for her family and her people. But at the very end of the book, she offers a measure of hope, one more powerful because of its restraint:
maybe you no longer haul those wounds with you
onto every bus, through the side streets of a new town,
maybe you have never set them rocking in the lamplight
on a nightstand beside a stranger’s bed, carrying your hurts
like two cracked pomegranates, because you haven’t learned
to see the beauty of a busted fruit, the bright stain it will leave
on your lips, the way it will make people want to kiss you.
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
Here's a short thing I wrote a few years ago:
One of the most interesting poetry debuts of the last few years has been that of Natalie Diaz. Part of the interest in her is certainly because of a compelling personal story. Diaz grew up on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation along the Colorado River. Her father was Spanish and her mother Native. After studying on the east coast and playing basketball professionally in Europe, she returned for graduate school and then a job working to revitalize the Mojave language. Much of this cultural information informs her poems and gives those of us who know little about it a glimpse into a rich history.
That cultural material and her family’s story also give the poems a deep sense of urgency. None of these poems feel frivolous. Although there are genuine moments of vision and humor in her first book, When My Brother Was an Aztec, there is also a very real anger. The title poem, which turns her brother’s drug addiction into a horrifying vision of the family he has damaged, begins: “He lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents / every morning. It was awful. Unforgivable. But they kept coming / back for more. They loved him, was all they could say.” Her brother’s addiction also becomes the telling image of the losses the Mojave people have suffered, even as it remains the tragic story of one man.
Diaz’s background, education, and reading have given her a broad range of reference. The brother becomes an Aztec god, “Huitzilopochtli, a god, half-man, half-hummingbird.” But more local myths and stories come in, too, as well as Christian and Greek mythology. Her literary references also move across cultures, from the Bible and the Koran to Spanish proverbs, Rimbaud, Whitman, Lorca, Borges, and a whole group of quieter references. This poet stretches all across the world to find the languages that can tell the story she needs to tell.
Diaz doesn’t find any easy answers to her devastating story. She doesn’t presume to say that love will be the answer for pain, even when she writes about the love she has for her family and her people. But at the very end of the book, she offers a measure of hope, one more powerful because of its restraint:
maybe you no longer haul those wounds with you
onto every bus, through the side streets of a new town,
maybe you have never set them rocking in the lamplight
on a nightstand beside a stranger’s bed, carrying your hurts
like two cracked pomegranates, because you haven’t learned
to see the beauty of a busted fruit, the bright stain it will leave
on your lips, the way it will make people want to kiss you.
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
June 24, 2016
Black Magic Brother
My brother’s shadow flutters from his shoulders, a magician’s cape.
My personal charlatan glittering in woofle dust and loaded
with gimmicks and gaffs.
A train of dirty cabooses, of once-beautiful girls,
follows my magus man like a chewed tail
helping him perform his tricks.
He calls them his Beloveds, his Sim Sala Bimbos, juggles them,
shoves them into pipes packed hot hard as cannons and Wham Bam
Ala-Kazam! whirls them to smoke.
Sometimes he vanishes their teeth then points his broken wand up
into the starry desert sky, says, Voilà! There they are!
and the girls giggle, revealing neon gums and purple throats.
My brother. My mago.
The consummate professional, he is dependable—performs daily,
nightly, in the living room, a forever-matinee, an always-late-shaman-show:
Come one, come all! Behold the spectacle
of the Prince of Prestidigitators.
As the main attraction (drumroll please) he pulls animals from a hole
in his crotch—
you thought I’d say hat, but you don’t know my black magic brother—
and those animals love him like the first animals
loved God
when He gave them names.
My brother. Our perpetual encore—
he riddles my father with red silk scarves before sawing him in half
with a steak knife. Now we have two fathers,
one who weeps anytime he hears the word Presto!
The other who drags his feet down the hall at night.
Neither has the stomach for steak anymore.
My mother, too, is gone somewhere
in one of the pockets of my brother’s bluest tuxedo:
Abracadabrantesque!
The audience is we—we have the stubs to prove it—
and we have been here for years, in velvet chairs the color of wounds,
waiting for something to fall,
maybe the curtain, maybe the crucifix on the wall,
or, maybe the pretty white doves my brother made disappear—
Now we see them, now we don’t—
will fall from his sleeves like angels—
right before our very eyes.
My brother’s shadow flutters from his shoulders, a magician’s cape.
My personal charlatan glittering in woofle dust and loaded
with gimmicks and gaffs.
A train of dirty cabooses, of once-beautiful girls,
follows my magus man like a chewed tail
helping him perform his tricks.
He calls them his Beloveds, his Sim Sala Bimbos, juggles them,
shoves them into pipes packed hot hard as cannons and Wham Bam
Ala-Kazam! whirls them to smoke.
Sometimes he vanishes their teeth then points his broken wand up
into the starry desert sky, says, Voilà! There they are!
and the girls giggle, revealing neon gums and purple throats.
My brother. My mago.
The consummate professional, he is dependable—performs daily,
nightly, in the living room, a forever-matinee, an always-late-shaman-show:
Come one, come all! Behold the spectacle
of the Prince of Prestidigitators.
As the main attraction (drumroll please) he pulls animals from a hole
in his crotch—
you thought I’d say hat, but you don’t know my black magic brother—
and those animals love him like the first animals
loved God
when He gave them names.
My brother. Our perpetual encore—
he riddles my father with red silk scarves before sawing him in half
with a steak knife. Now we have two fathers,
one who weeps anytime he hears the word Presto!
The other who drags his feet down the hall at night.
Neither has the stomach for steak anymore.
My mother, too, is gone somewhere
in one of the pockets of my brother’s bluest tuxedo:
Abracadabrantesque!
The audience is we—we have the stubs to prove it—
and we have been here for years, in velvet chairs the color of wounds,
waiting for something to fall,
maybe the curtain, maybe the crucifix on the wall,
or, maybe the pretty white doves my brother made disappear—
Now we see them, now we don’t—
will fall from his sleeves like angels—
right before our very eyes.
April 10, 2013
This is one of the most exciting poetry collections I've read in a long time. The brutal honesty of these poems is what gets me. There are so many surprises. I found the poems concerning the brother and his relation to the family to be the most powerful/painful. I'll be reading this collection over and over.
March 6, 2020
‘When My Brother Was an Aztec’ comes from an interesting place with Diaz growing up on a Mojave Indian reservation, having to dealing with her brother’s addiction, and suffering her lover’s jealousy, among other things. She lays her life bare with a brutal honesty. I liked the content, but didn’t really connect with the poetry. Glad I read it, though.
May 10, 2013
I have only three words: READ THIS BOOK.
June 17, 2014
Spellbinding, meaty, frightening and beautiful. This first collection feels like it carries the weight of a life, illuminated and abiding. Diaz' poems do not spare us the bright stains of life's wounds, but they do not sink into despair. Rather, these are poems born of the magical and majestic art of healing. Highly recommended.
February 15, 2021
I can't recommend this collection enough. Imagery that will gut you and a seamless mix of traditions and mythologies, taking on the issues of family, identity, history, and suffering from the inside and not just as a spectator. "Why I hate raisins" is a better love poem than most that would call themselves that.
Read
May 28, 2016My copy of this book is 75% highlighter now.
April 23, 2020
Diaz’s debut collection tackles big questions intelligently and sympathetically. While I found her more recent collection more powerful, the poems here detailing her family’s struggles with her brother’s drug addiction were very moving.
November 21, 2020
Since quarantine began, I've made a habit of reading a poem a day in the morning. When My Brother Was an Aztec was both perfect for that and not at all. These poems are DENSE. Between the frequent allusions to history, the Bible, and other writers' style and Diaz's penchant for experimenting with specific poem structures, this collection sometimes feels designed to be a studied. I noted the ones that I'd like to bring to my American Literature classroom during the fall semester when we read
There There
by Tommy Orange, but it's also difficult to imagine any of them being taught as a supplement. These poems demand their own study and research. They allude to an important history that requires context, and they allude to each other in a way that would be a shame to brush past.
It's insane to critique such powerful and well-crafted writing, but if I had one it would be that this collection had me in my thinking more than my feeling.
But then there are the lines that kick you in the gut.
Her diabetic grandmother asks the speaker to rub her amputated legs: “Her missing kneecaps are bright bones caught in my throat” (16).
A semi drives over a migration of tarantulas: “I can still hear the crunch. I can feel the ones that kept crawling, / over the others, their brothers and sisters. / Busted scabs in the road” (57).
A woman eats an apple that “pulses like a red bird in her hand”: “She bites, cleaving away a red wing. / The red bird sings. Yes, / she bites the apple and there is music-- / a branch breaking, a ship undone by the shore, / a knife making love to a wound, the sweet scrape / of a match lighting the lamp of her mouth” (74).
When she imagines her lover being with someone else: “Tonight I am riddled by this thick skull / this white bowling ball zipped in the sad-sack carrying case of my face” (79)
Her meth-addicted brother makes a mess of her parents' home: “--my mom tries to dress the place up: riddled doilies, / the burning-heart Jesus with eyes that used to follow us / around the room until someone plucked out each bright circle. / Now my fingers slip down into the slick holes in Jesus’s face” (55).
The most powerful are the ones about how her brother's meth addiction impacts her family. In "How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs" (46), her brother comes downstairs dressed in a three-piece skeleton suit as if for a Day of the Dead parade and, when she makes him go change, comes down again as a Judas effigy. Anyone who knows the pain of loving someone who won't love themselves can feel the speaker's exasperation: "because tonight you are not in the mood / to have your heart ripped out. It gets old, / having your heart ripped out, / being opened that way." She remembers taking him in once, not so much as "a three-quarter-court / heave, a buzzer-beater to win something of him back" than as a way to "ease / the guilt of never having tried." When she finally asked him to leave, he "left [her] / with his meth pipe ringing in the dryer." So at dinner, when the speaker pours her "thirty pieces of silver / onto the table and ask[s], 'What can I get for this?'", you can't blame her.
It's insane to critique such powerful and well-crafted writing, but if I had one it would be that this collection had me in my thinking more than my feeling.
But then there are the lines that kick you in the gut.
Her diabetic grandmother asks the speaker to rub her amputated legs: “Her missing kneecaps are bright bones caught in my throat” (16).
A semi drives over a migration of tarantulas: “I can still hear the crunch. I can feel the ones that kept crawling, / over the others, their brothers and sisters. / Busted scabs in the road” (57).
A woman eats an apple that “pulses like a red bird in her hand”: “She bites, cleaving away a red wing. / The red bird sings. Yes, / she bites the apple and there is music-- / a branch breaking, a ship undone by the shore, / a knife making love to a wound, the sweet scrape / of a match lighting the lamp of her mouth” (74).
When she imagines her lover being with someone else: “Tonight I am riddled by this thick skull / this white bowling ball zipped in the sad-sack carrying case of my face” (79)
Her meth-addicted brother makes a mess of her parents' home: “--my mom tries to dress the place up: riddled doilies, / the burning-heart Jesus with eyes that used to follow us / around the room until someone plucked out each bright circle. / Now my fingers slip down into the slick holes in Jesus’s face” (55).
The most powerful are the ones about how her brother's meth addiction impacts her family. In "How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs" (46), her brother comes downstairs dressed in a three-piece skeleton suit as if for a Day of the Dead parade and, when she makes him go change, comes down again as a Judas effigy. Anyone who knows the pain of loving someone who won't love themselves can feel the speaker's exasperation: "because tonight you are not in the mood / to have your heart ripped out. It gets old, / having your heart ripped out, / being opened that way." She remembers taking him in once, not so much as "a three-quarter-court / heave, a buzzer-beater to win something of him back" than as a way to "ease / the guilt of never having tried." When she finally asked him to leave, he "left [her] / with his meth pipe ringing in the dryer." So at dinner, when the speaker pours her "thirty pieces of silver / onto the table and ask[s], 'What can I get for this?'", you can't blame her.
November 4, 2016
Sharp, angry poems with a fine eye toward metaphor and repetition. Part II, which deals primarily with her brother's struggles with drug addition, was particularly brutal. (At times I felt like the book might have benefited from a smaller selection of poems, since so many retread the same thematic territory--but there's no specific poem I would have cut, and perhaps that's just my own discomfort with the subject matter speaking.) Part III, which leans toward lesbian love poetry, was an unexpected treat after that. Some passages that particularly resonated:
When My Brother Was an Aztec:
"My parents gathered
what he'd left of their bodies, trying to stand within legs,
trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers
to pray."
A Woman with No Legs
"Told me
to keep my eyes open for the white man named Diabetes who is out
there somewhere carrying her legs in red biohazard bags tucked
under his arms Asks me to rub her legs which aren't there so I
pretend by pressing my hands into the empty sheets at the foot of
her bed Feels like she's lost part of her memory the part the legs knew
best like earth Her missing kneecaps are bright bones caught in my throat"
Reservation Mary
"Just the other day, at a party on first beach, someone asked
if she still had that 3-point touch, if she wished she still played ball,
and she answered that she wished a lot of things,
but what she wished for most at that minute was that she could turn
the entire Colorado River into E & J Ripple--
she went on a beer run instead,
and as she made her way over the bumpy back roads along the river,
that smooth-faced baby in the backseat cried out for something."
Cloud Watching
"A tongue will wrestle its mouth to death and lose--
language is a cemetery."
The Last Mojave Indian Barbie
"worst of all, Mojave Barbie couldn't find a single soft spot on
her body to inject her insulin. It had taken years of court cases,
litigation, letters from tribal council members, testimonials from
CHR nurses, and a few diabetic comas just to receive permission to
buy the never-released hypodermic needle accessory kit--before
that, she'd bought most on the Japanese black market--Mattel
didn't like toying around with the possibility of a Junkie Barbie."
Prayers or Oubliettes
"The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark."
As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs
"--when I visit, I hate searching for the door--usually
my brother's boot print on my dad's ribs, once it was
a hole in my mom's chest that changed her into a sad guitar
for three years--these are more like exits than doors.
They are difficult to get through."
I Watch Her Eat the Apple
"She twists the stem, pulls it
like the pin of a grenade, and I just know
somewhere someone is sitting alone on a porch,
bruised, opened up to their wet white ribs,
riddled by her teeth--
lucky."
When My Brother Was an Aztec:
"My parents gathered
what he'd left of their bodies, trying to stand within legs,
trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers
to pray."
A Woman with No Legs
"Told me
to keep my eyes open for the white man named Diabetes who is out
there somewhere carrying her legs in red biohazard bags tucked
under his arms Asks me to rub her legs which aren't there so I
pretend by pressing my hands into the empty sheets at the foot of
her bed Feels like she's lost part of her memory the part the legs knew
best like earth Her missing kneecaps are bright bones caught in my throat"
Reservation Mary
"Just the other day, at a party on first beach, someone asked
if she still had that 3-point touch, if she wished she still played ball,
and she answered that she wished a lot of things,
but what she wished for most at that minute was that she could turn
the entire Colorado River into E & J Ripple--
she went on a beer run instead,
and as she made her way over the bumpy back roads along the river,
that smooth-faced baby in the backseat cried out for something."
Cloud Watching
"A tongue will wrestle its mouth to death and lose--
language is a cemetery."
The Last Mojave Indian Barbie
"worst of all, Mojave Barbie couldn't find a single soft spot on
her body to inject her insulin. It had taken years of court cases,
litigation, letters from tribal council members, testimonials from
CHR nurses, and a few diabetic comas just to receive permission to
buy the never-released hypodermic needle accessory kit--before
that, she'd bought most on the Japanese black market--Mattel
didn't like toying around with the possibility of a Junkie Barbie."
Prayers or Oubliettes
"The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark."
As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs
"--when I visit, I hate searching for the door--usually
my brother's boot print on my dad's ribs, once it was
a hole in my mom's chest that changed her into a sad guitar
for three years--these are more like exits than doors.
They are difficult to get through."
I Watch Her Eat the Apple
"She twists the stem, pulls it
like the pin of a grenade, and I just know
somewhere someone is sitting alone on a porch,
bruised, opened up to their wet white ribs,
riddled by her teeth--
lucky."
June 21, 2012
"When My Brother Was an Aztec" is a powerful collection from an emerging poet you'll be hearing of soon...so get ahead of the curve and be the one talking about it...
Fierce and fragile is the world created in Natalie Diaz's debut collection. The poems chronicles the challenges, heartbreak, hunger(s) and means of survival growing up on the reservation. Varied in form (ballads, pantoum, abecedarian...) and consistently strong, these poems explore hunger and history, weakness and courage, in both highly personal and political ways.
The title poem and "How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs" are to gut kickers. I'm a sucker for basketball poems, and I know too many women whose stories echo "Reservations Mary" not to love this poem. "Why I Hate Raisins" a moving reflection on rations. I love the way poems move from the very historical and concrete to the metaphysical, the way "The Facts of Art" about Hopi men working on the highways is followed by the mystical and moving "Zoology."
If the title of the book hadn't hooked me, the title of "When the Beloved Asks, "What Would You Do if You Woke Up and I Was a Shark" would have; first line tease: "My lover doesn't realize that I've contemplated this scenario."
Anyway, 5 STARS from me.
Consider giving GOODREADS a reminder that, as Audre Lorde (who, I think, would have loved this book), said: "Poetry is not a luxury." Goodreads does not list poetry as a "favorite genre." You can choose from
fiction
nonfiction
young adult
children’s
history & biography
memoir & autobiography
mystery & thriller
romance
science fiction
historical fiction
graphic novels & comics
BUT NOT POETRY!
Fierce and fragile is the world created in Natalie Diaz's debut collection. The poems chronicles the challenges, heartbreak, hunger(s) and means of survival growing up on the reservation. Varied in form (ballads, pantoum, abecedarian...) and consistently strong, these poems explore hunger and history, weakness and courage, in both highly personal and political ways.
The title poem and "How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs" are to gut kickers. I'm a sucker for basketball poems, and I know too many women whose stories echo "Reservations Mary" not to love this poem. "Why I Hate Raisins" a moving reflection on rations. I love the way poems move from the very historical and concrete to the metaphysical, the way "The Facts of Art" about Hopi men working on the highways is followed by the mystical and moving "Zoology."
If the title of the book hadn't hooked me, the title of "When the Beloved Asks, "What Would You Do if You Woke Up and I Was a Shark" would have; first line tease: "My lover doesn't realize that I've contemplated this scenario."
Anyway, 5 STARS from me.
Consider giving GOODREADS a reminder that, as Audre Lorde (who, I think, would have loved this book), said: "Poetry is not a luxury." Goodreads does not list poetry as a "favorite genre." You can choose from
fiction
nonfiction
young adult
children’s
history & biography
memoir & autobiography
mystery & thriller
romance
science fiction
historical fiction
graphic novels & comics
BUT NOT POETRY!
October 4, 2020
the poems just kept getting better and better.
If Eve Side-Stealer and Mary Busted-Chest Ruled the World
What if Eve was an Indian
& Adam was never kneaded
from the earth, Eve wasEarth
& ribs were her idea all along?
What if Mary was an Indian
& when Gabriel visited her wigwam
she was away at a monthly WIC clinic
receiving eggs, boxed cheese
& peanut butter instead of Jesus?
What if God was an Indian
with turquoise wings & coral breasts
who invented a game called White Man Chess
played on silver boards with all white pieces
pawns & kings & only one side, the white side
& the more they won the more they were beaten?
What if the world was an Indian
whose head & back were flat from being strapped
to a cradleboard as a baby & when she slept
she had nightmares lit up by yellow-haired men & ships
scraping anchors in her throat? What if she wailed
all night while great waves rose up carrying the fleets
across her flat back, over the edge of the flat world?
some other favourites: Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis, Reservation Grass, Soirée Fantastique.
If Eve Side-Stealer and Mary Busted-Chest Ruled the World
What if Eve was an Indian
& Adam was never kneaded
from the earth, Eve wasEarth
& ribs were her idea all along?
What if Mary was an Indian
& when Gabriel visited her wigwam
she was away at a monthly WIC clinic
receiving eggs, boxed cheese
& peanut butter instead of Jesus?
What if God was an Indian
with turquoise wings & coral breasts
who invented a game called White Man Chess
played on silver boards with all white pieces
pawns & kings & only one side, the white side
& the more they won the more they were beaten?
What if the world was an Indian
whose head & back were flat from being strapped
to a cradleboard as a baby & when she slept
she had nightmares lit up by yellow-haired men & ships
scraping anchors in her throat? What if she wailed
all night while great waves rose up carrying the fleets
across her flat back, over the edge of the flat world?
some other favourites: Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis, Reservation Grass, Soirée Fantastique.
December 19, 2022
It is hard to believe that this is a debut poetry collection and yet already Natalie Díaz shows so much mastery of her craft. This collection explores the author's identity as an Indigenous Mojave woman, her family's struggle with her brother's meth addiction, and exploration of queer sensuality and romance. This was such a rich collection that showcased linguistic skill and an aptitude for evocative imagery as well. I cannot wait to read more of Natalie Díaz's work!
December 20, 2024
I do not normally read poetry, but a friend lent this book to me and I decided to give the genre a try. As a result, I found this to be oddly both emotionally and mentally stimulating.
The general theme covers a sister’s documentation of her brother’s drug use and the destruction it brings to her family. While the theme itself doesn’t resonate, the emotional depth comes through loud and clear, and overall I do appreciate the poems that are logged here.
The general theme covers a sister’s documentation of her brother’s drug use and the destruction it brings to her family. While the theme itself doesn’t resonate, the emotional depth comes through loud and clear, and overall I do appreciate the poems that are logged here.
April 2, 2017
An angry, scathing, beautiful collection of modern poetry- something I don't get to say very much. Diaz' conflicts are Grecian in tragedy, so familial but so grand, while her style reminds me of early Atwood poetry. The poetics are smooth, inventive, and memorable enough to make this a suggested collection.
March 18, 2024
If I were giving a completely objective review I would give this 3.5 stars. But I don’t believe poetry is meant for objectivity and 6 or 7 of these pieces brought actual tears to my eyes.
I don’t think this is a book for everyone, but it’s definitely a book for me.
I don’t think this is a book for everyone, but it’s definitely a book for me.
January 19, 2019
I can't think of an adjective to describe this that wouldn't be a cliche, but they're all true: Powerful. Riveting. Etc. Etc.
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