Streaming

by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Split This Rock Recommended Poetry Books of 2014

Praise for Allison Adelle Hedge Coke:

"These are the songs of righteous anger and utter beauty."—Joy Harjo

From "Carcass":

Split skin stretched over marrowless cage,
encased dry tomb, like those strewn
through this loess reach, cradling past
ever present here, and now you come
walking riverside, bringing sensory thrill
into daylight much like this cervidae
culled morning each waking before
demise. We move this way, catching life
until death captures us, where we rot
into the same dust holding multitudes
before us, and welcoming those beyond.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is a poet, writer, performer, editor, and activist.

Genres: Poetry

147 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 2014

About the author

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke authored books include: The Year of the Rat, (American Book Award) Dog Road Woman and Off-Season City Pipe, poetry; Rock Ghost, Willow, Deer, a memoir; and Blood Run, a verse-play that served to lobby for legislation and protection of the Indigenous site. 2014 works: Burn, MadHat Press and Streaming, Coffee House Press. Hedge Coke has edited eight additional collections, including Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, Effigies, & Effigies II (2014) & directs the Literary Sandhill CraneFest. She came of age cropping tobacco and working fields, waters, and working in factories.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first heard about this new work, I thought it was music. Maybe it was the title, but from the first brief glimpses I saw, I expected poetry set to music. There is an album of this out there like that, but even with the text of these poems I was not wholly wrong. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke's poetry has always struck me as having an inherent musicality to it, and these poems are no exception. Even beyond the music in the words and the arrangement though, there is a constant connection to the music of the world itself. There is a silent music in the patterns of things, both sweet and discordant, and it seems to me that these poems are firmly linked to that. Whether you think I'm totally off base on that or not, I don't think you could reasonably find fault with these poems. This is some richly vivid and elegantly moving writing.

[Shari · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're sickened to the point of jaundice by the droves of bland MFA McPoetry being churned out by certain journals and MFA programs, "Streaming" is for you. If you're tired of unidimensional twiggish poems that resonate with a sucking up sound directed at the powers that be, this book is for you. If you actually enjoy poetry and thinking, this book is for you. If you prefer to rub a neuron or two together once in a while, rather then liking what other people tell you to like, this book is especially for you. Hedge Coke's poem, "Philosophy," is one of the finest poems I've ever read. The lyric development in such a short piece is rarely achieved with such grace. This poem, perhaps more than others in this collection, requires a certain level of literary cultural competence to fully appreciate the nuances.

[Sheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit I'm not really a poetry person much any more. Certain ones can jump out at me, but as a whole I have trouble reading it/absorbing it. These were fine, probably but I kept reading and re reading and failing to absorb it.

[Jay Shelat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous, marvelous collection of poems. Worth the time and read.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The beauty of it all
In sunlightened wing shining, falling forward
And back, up and down."

Is summer a box of light?
Box of fruit, opening?
Light streaming in all directions
Fanning heat in rays spread,
Sunshine through sheltering shade,
Shadow dark embracing
Offering light in each give, each
Bend, every pressing hold
Sheltering in radiance, resplendent.

Of Huron, Metis, French Canadian and European heritage, this poet came to my attention in an anthology and her other work did not disappoint. She uses big, bold, gorgeous words and imagery that are powerful, life-giving and so important in this time. I am so excited to explore more of her work.

HIBAKUSHA
Each breath depends upon life
Easing lungs: child and elder.
Every inkling, cause for peace

Each moment
offering time,
Simple presence with still hands
Streaming over darkened light.

Sharing inhale, exhale, peace-
Calling, come to this.

A TIME, elegy for my mother

The problem—
it’s not been written yet, the omens:
the headless owl, the bobcat struck,
the red wolf where she could not be.

None of it done and yet it’s over.

Nothing yet
of night when she called me closer
asked me to bring her crow painting
to stay straight across from her feet
so she could waken into it,
remember her friend.

Of Old Chief alongside her shoulder
still watching over her
just as the mountain had done
throughout her Alberta childhood.

The Pendleton shroud bearing our braids,
her figure in flaming pyre.

The cards, the notes, the tasks
the things undone, not done
and she with us faraway
as this has always been and ever
will continue.

We meet we leave
we meld and vaporize from whatever
it was that held us human

in this life.

And all the beautiful things
that lead our thoughts and give us reason
remain despite the leaving and
all I know is what you know

when it is over said and done
it was a time
and there was never enough of it.

STREAMING
…
Here, in the cylindrical and spherical,
In the curvilinear space
Its echo-wrinkle reverberations.
Discernments, definitive dissonance;
Here, intuition/memory intersect,
Prophesy source into beingness,
We in certain presence - being- at all times.

On a river of variable stream, channel flow,
Confluence, departures give wellsprings,
Condition broad throughways,
Water comes, proper placement,
Nourishes life, causes sustenance. Come fruition,

Informed by being, by elemental colliding,
Intersections within these planes,
Within swell of source throughout elements, earth,
Animal, plant: animate, inanimate.
Swelling echoes moving in seven directions,
Spherical in a sense of reverb actions and response

In waves of knows we perceive, collide into,
Multidimensional, the sense of time, space, place-
The experiential impressed by a familiar spiritual sense.

HARP STRINGS
Sweet rain on old growth sweeps past in fanning sheets,
This morning each veil brings joy, like someone strumming
Mist releasing song, falling to branch above hummingbird
Dashing in, out, grabbing nectar in the wet, wet music.
Dashing in, out, grabbing nectar in the wet, wet music.
Mist releasing song, falling to branch above hummingbird
This morning each veil brings joy, like someone strumming.
Sweet rain on old growth sweeps past in fanning sheets.

IN THE YEAR 513 PC

In the year 513 PC- post-contact, post-Columbus, post-cultural invasion- In the year, 513 PC, we heard fluting sounds from southern feathered, feathered never here before this rhyme, never without zookeeper logic trace. Never. No. Prior to this vast erasure, those sounds fell way below equator, left us here without the slightest notion all along. Now robins sing early, leaving them hungry for later worms. Now no bird’s leaving, tides receding, waters capture sand like evening fog…

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The lyricism in the lines and the soundscapes are exquisite.

[Diane Lefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m going to write this now as it may be a long, long time till I read this entire collection. I just keep reading and rereading the long title poem, sometimes silently from the page, sometimes aloud, keeping a beat - whether it’s the “right” beat or not. This poem carries me into a cosmic altered state. I may not understand every word and every line. That makes no difference. The poem happens to me. It thrums with the beat of the universe and with life, all kinds of life around us, with image-flashes of human life, especially Native life, and through the swirl, clarity of human need. “Streaming” is an out-of-body experience. Scary great.