Gathering the Tribes

Yale Series of Younger Poets

by Carolyn Forché, Stanley Kunitz (Foreword)

The language and images of Carolyn Forché’s poetry are so closely bound to the natural cycles of the seasons, of generations, of the body’s functioning, that it is surprising to realize how many of her poems deal with uprootedness―hasty emigrations from Czechoslovakia and Kiev, the loss of grandparents and other elders, people leaving and being sent away. But this poetry is not a sentimental celebration of the goodness of nature, and harmony with the world is never something assumed. The harmony Forché seeks goes deeper than simple submission to natural processes or identification with an ethnic group, and it must be fought for with a tenuous faith, the balance that must be found between the ugliness, the harshness of her history―both natural and social―and its intense beauty, is what distinguishes Forché’s poetry, gives it is depth and dimension.

Genres: Poetry, American

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1950. She studied at Michigan State University and earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University. Forché is the author of four books of poetry: Blue Hour (HarperCollins, 2004); The Angel of History (1994), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; The Country Between Us (1982), which received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Gathering the Tribes (1976), which was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. She is also the editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993). Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems with Munir Akash (2003), Claribel Alegria's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991). Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992, she received the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum.

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Reviews

[Kimber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book to be read and re-read--I don't want to say "studied." I want to say experienced and felt. I love this feeling of how she is weaving into her poems this sensuality, this feel for textures, this connection to lineage and ancestry. Her grandmother, Anna, as representative of the passage of history and what she passes on, and the wisdom she gives to her. And her sexual poems are by far my favorite, a subtly that shows in understatement there is a far more powerful effect. Simplicity, but not simple.
Must Read Poems:

"Burning the Tomato Worms"
"Year at Mudstraw"
"Taking off my Clothes"

[Gill LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

at first i was underwhelmed, then i was stunned, then i was upset, then i was gay <3

[H]

feeling despondent about my own poetry and the only balm for that is to read poetry. so i sat in the garden and did.

it’s interesting to have worked backwards from the angel of history to this—while i can see her concerns shifting, they still have a quality that is unique to this poet, a sort of starkness of image, a profundity. i liked the third section the best, but then, i do love when a book turns erotic. “this is their fault” was my favorite

[Karen Lepri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this book 4 stars for the last section--hard to find such stunning, erotic poems.

[Jeffrey Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carolyn Forché's poetry has me by the throat. I starve for air, in between readings of her books. My head aches, eyes over-pressurize in this low atmosphere, this humid climate that is the underbelly of revelation. She begs me to take a bite and sings as I swallow. In her, I am a bell among bells in the bustle of the market square, all our tongues removed, our siren calls silenced so that we may be given the gift of sight. This volume of her poems grabs me by the very redness of my blood. I am guest, in one sense, I chop wood between the lines and enjoy home cooked feasts. I feel cleansed, bathed, an honored witness. This volume gives me sex and violence and the trees in places I did not expect, and I am excited to redefine my terms. By Carolyn Forché's poems, am I brought to a wider, plainer view of a familiar, forgotten center. How did it take me this long to find her? What will I do when I am without her, but enter the surf, head first bearing my shell down, and down.

I just finished this volume. Forgive me, I don't have the heart to review the poems as poems just yet.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining and thought provoking collection, which the Yale series gushed over because of erotic themes integrated with deep personal and cultural history. Great for such a young offering, worth the read, but her later works are to be more highly recommended. Immature in places and predictive in places.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've made it my mission to read more poetry this year and to explore some poets who are new to me. Carolyn Forche is originally from my home state of Michigan so I started with her debut collection. This was published in 1976 and still feels new today. Forche was very young (18? 20?) when she wrote this and she writes with the wisdom and skill of a much older poet. I was especially moved by poems about her Slavic heritage and about her grandmother making bread and tending a garden. There are powerful poems about leaving one's homeland and a lovely, lusty poem about love with another woman. Looking forward to more of her poetry.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as I know, this is Carolyn Forché’s only book written before she went to El Salvador, so it was fascinating to read what her poetry was like before that major event which changed her life. This is not her best work, and there are many many references to real people she knew that it’s sometimes hard to follow. Even with having read her memoir, I was lost at times. I’m still glad I read this, as I want to read everything she has ever written.

[Sebastian]

First read: June 21, 2019, Friday

[John Berner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forche has an undeniably good ear but I'd be lying if I said any of these poems made much of an impression on me.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

It didn't move me as much as her later work does. You can see the groundwork being laid, but she is on the cusp of developing a deeper and broader perspective.

[Bels]

Can't rate it yet.
Note: Reread.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in the year of the Bicentennial as part of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Gathering the Tribes came with a blessing of an introduction from Stanley Kunitz. You couldn’t ask for a better launch for such a quintessentially American poet, one who is at once cross-cultural and rooted in a borderless place, able also to operate in the rare air of the timeless. “I came down from her in south Michigan / Picture the resemblance. // Now I squint over the same fields scraped in sun / And now I burn tomato worms and string useless gourds,” she writes of her relationship to her Slovak grandmother. We become our ancestors; perhaps they also become us. “I want to ask her why I live / And we go back apart across the field / Why I am here and will have to feel the way I die / It was all over my face / Grandma flipped kolacy rolls / Dunked her hands in bowls of water / Looked at me / Wrung the rags into the stoop / Kept it from me / Whatever she saw”.

The first writer that came to me as I read Forché was Peter Matthiessen, another quintessential American writer. They are in most ways very different writers but with some shared interests: landscape, wildlife, indigenous cultures. And there is something in their seeing, and in the rhythm of the phrases that captures the seeing, that echoes the other. It is a vivid, uniquely specific and memorable way of putting the reader where the writer is. “Adobe walls crack, rot in Las Truchas. / Sometimes a child in a doorway / or dog stretched on the road. / Always a quiet place. / Wooden wheelbarrows rest up against / boarded windows. / Not yet Semana Santa”. Or, in another poem, “There is a strange list / to the wet range of clouds / stroking our fields: / heavy pheasants were / high in the wind, high over / currant shrubs, unmown grain.” It is not just a specific place but a specific place and moment.

Forché’s poetry touches on family, history, love, desire, ritual, memory, death, loss, gender, and beauty. It is seductive and achingly beautiful, earthy and mystical. Plain Song: “When it happens, let the birds come. / Let my hands fall without being folded. / And naked in hair that grows on the dead / tie feathers from the young female. // Close my eyes with coins, cover / my head with agave baskets / that have carried water. // Bring the tub drums and dance. / Bring me to burn with a mesquite branch / and wears the bones that I leave / around your necks.”

[Lisha Adela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the one book, the first book of Carolyn Forché's I had yet to read. It was the book that was awarded the Yale Young Poets award. What insight at such a young age. There are moments in this book, "ghosts in my mouth" that cut across cultural identities to the overall human garment. I was fascinated, read the book twice and marvel at how such a unique voice, so young, could capture the human spirit in the land, in the ethers and in our psyche. " I am the spirit entering the stomach of the stones." Pretty good description of life as we know it, don't you think?

[Shay · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of symbols to see and you definately get a feel for the setting. The book goes from one place to a complete other. First more about her grandmothers life and then into here own. Her grandmothers influence and her as a child to her life as an adult with sexual desire and experences along with life and how she sees it on her own now.

[Laura Hartmark · Rating 5 out of 5]

If life were a myth, Forche would be the character who travels the world, gathering tears in a cup. People would say, "I have so many tears, and I am afraid they will fall." Forche would say, "I have a cup. I will gather your tears so you need not worry." Forche, as a poet and an inspiration, is beloved by many.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a 70s-era personal history book of poems, but some of it feels very brave and true, and it sounds beautiful out loud.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is beautiful.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

FUCKING AMAZING.

[Catherine Ayres · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books by Forche.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5? 4? not sure so rounding up.

[Chris]

Forché's first volume of poetry. It's bold and beautiful, and a strong precursor to her later works.

[Jonathan Wichmann]

This was a very powerful read. I've seen Forché read her work at Carleton College. The book is an early one, perhaps her first, if I remember right. Intense feminist, feminine, wilderness imagery. Maybe even "ahumanist," if I'm remembering Robinson Jeffers's coined term / philosophy adequately.