Copper Yearning

by Kimberly Blaeser

Copper Yearning invests itself in a compassionate dual vision―bearing witness to the lush beauty of our intricately woven environments and to the historical and contemporary perils that threaten them. Kimberly Blaeser’s fourth collection of poetry deftly reflects her Indigenous perspective and a global awareness. Through vividly rendered images, the poems dwell among watery geographies, alive to each natural nuance, alive also to the uncanny. Set in fishing boats, in dreams, in prisons, in memory, or in far flung countries like Bahrain, the pieces sing of mythic truths and of the poignant everyday injustices. But, whether resisting threats to effigy mounds or inhabiting the otherness of river otter, ultimately they voice a universal longing for a place of balance, a way of being in the world―for the ineffable.

Genres: Poetry

158 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2019

About the author

Kimberly Blaeser is a Professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she teaches Creative Writing and Native American Literatures. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Apprenticed to Justice, Absentee Indians and Other Poems, and Trailing You. Blaeser is Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and grew up on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. She is the editor of Stories Migrating Home: A Collection of Anishinaabe Prose and Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. Blaeser, is currently at work on a collection of “Picto-Poems” which combines her photographs and poetry. She was selected to serve as Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2015-16.

Reviews

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sing me again the saga of sin
and separation
of humans and hierarchies;
the ballad of glacial bodies
of many creatures made of water and belief—
the one about transformations
about eons and epics—
these sacred cycles and everyday survivals."
—"Of Eons and Epics" by Kimberly Blaeser in Copper Yearning

I've only read one other collection by Blaeser. I remember reading it and feeling the emotion while also feeling distinctly like I was reading work by someone who knows the craft. You know that way you read poetry and know it's beautiful but also feel like a complete imposter because some of it goes way over your head? That's how I feel about parts of Copper Yearning.

There were sections of this collection that had me wholly invested but there were also many pieces that begged me to go slow, to think,  to revisit. If that's how you read poetry, I highly recommend this collection. Filled with family, memories, connections and belongings, environments, and colonialism, and violences, Blaeser has crafted an emotive experience in Copper Yearning and I fully intend to go back to this one again.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"See the small grains of Waabandan negawan
sand--

Ah, only those poor aah sa ongow eta
few--

but they become our maaaji-mishiikenh-minis
turtle island"

[Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the past year I've come across a couple of Kimberly Blaeser's poems on the net. A short bit from the author blurb in the book:

Kimberly Blaeser, an Anishinaabe writer, photographer, and scholar, served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2015-16. She is also the author of … poetry collections and a scholarly monograph... Blaeser is a professor of English and Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and serves on faculty for the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Program in Santa Fe. And so much more! Go here to learn more.

I connected so well with her poetry that I bought a couple of her collections. Copper Yearning is the one I chose to read first. The 141-page book has a substantial number (over 80) of poems, arranged in six sections:
I. Geographies of Longing
II. Hunger for Balance
III. Frayed Histories
IV. Alchemy Inherited
V. Black Ash and Resistance
VI. Refractions of Spirit

There is also an opening “Proem” and an “Envoi.”

What stands out in these poems is an intimate love bond between the poet and nature. Kimberly has clearly spent most of her life communing in nature with her presence and senses attuned to its language.

Also omnipresent is an honoring of the ancestors and as proxy voice of advocacy for those humans in the First Peoples Tribes from the past, present, and future that need to be heard.

Although I enjoyed the poems throughout the collection, my favorites all came from parts IV, V, and VI:

“Regarding the Care of Homeless Children” – comments on an old “scientific” study
“This House of Words” – truth will never be silenced
“Mooningwanekaaning-minis” – attempts to extinguish us will never succeed
“Because We Come From Everything” – we will never be extinguished
“Eloquence of Earth” – observances on the killing ways of “modern” society
“Prairie Thunder” – the mass extermination of bison and a call to rebuild
“A Song for Giving Back” – the virtues of our lifeblood, water
“These Small Turns of Memory” (9:22) – are there tests for what we need to know?
“After Words” – on death

[Mary Schreiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I attended Kimberly Blaeser’s AWP session in Kansas City hoping to push my writing forward. It was titled, “When We River IN-NA-PO Poets and Hydro-Poetics.” Every writer on the panel inspired me but one theme shifted my perception of nature—the importance of “writing with water not about it.”

After reading Blaeser’s COPPER YEARNING and ANCIENT LIGHT, I now understand the creative power of poetry. “Each sound a ripple, the aching edge of a cicada’s call.” submerged me in nature; “Wondering as I do / if I am motion or rock, / floating on the surface / or sunk now / dreaming in watery words.” showed me how to dive underwater and breathe; and “swimming in the moist black of earth / surrounded by dark aloneness” introduced me to earthly spirits. If you are a writer looking for inspiration, read Blaeser’s poems.

[Madeline Wolf]

this was for class. it had a lot of fancy words in it!

[Phoebe DeBates · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful use of nature to portray the terrible events of history involving Native American peoples.