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WING
Poetry. California Interest. Native American Studies. Imagined and real worlds intersect as lyric poet Denise Low dances between mortals and the dead, humans and animals, her European and Indigenous heritages. Real pandemics and wildfires set the stage as she illumines connections between the rational and intuitive. This former Poet Laureate of Kansas mourns the lost buffalo herds and celebrates the irresistible and beautiful material world of art, from Renaissance paintings to recent works by Nick Cave, Julie Buffalohead, and Peter Max. History is a living entity in the English lords court on teacups; a spirit woman walks Cimarron Breaks. Two hands and vestigial limbs --including wings --are tools for understanding the dualities of existence. Low's rich work sings a healing song, knitting opposites together into a whole.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2021
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August 2, 2021Denise Low is one of my favorite contemporary poets and I really appreciated (savored!) this new collection too. It still has some Kansas poems, but now also poems about her new locale in California. She continues to have the most amazing nature poems, including one about that fluff that floats in the air and gets everywhere, YES, THAT. (Titled "Cottonwood Cotton".)
She engages with themes that she started to explore earlier, like her unenrolled Lenape grandfather and what this means wrt her own ancestry and belonging (she has a nonfiction book "The Turtle's Beating Heart: One Family's Story of Lenape Survival"). But I felt like in this volume she was also starting to approach topics that did not stand out as themes for me before in her work - maybe I just haven't read enough of it, but I'm trying to remedy that :) Especially mentions of Western occultism; they really seemed to fit together as a kind of small serendipitous thread through the collection that I didn't expect.
(The Sealey Challenge 2021 #1.)
______
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
She engages with themes that she started to explore earlier, like her unenrolled Lenape grandfather and what this means wrt her own ancestry and belonging (she has a nonfiction book "The Turtle's Beating Heart: One Family's Story of Lenape Survival"). But I felt like in this volume she was also starting to approach topics that did not stand out as themes for me before in her work - maybe I just haven't read enough of it, but I'm trying to remedy that :) Especially mentions of Western occultism; they really seemed to fit together as a kind of small serendipitous thread through the collection that I didn't expect.
(The Sealey Challenge 2021 #1.)
______
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
August 16, 2023
Excellent poetry collection by renowned poet Denise Low, winner of the Red Mountain Press Editor's Choice Award for SHADOW LIGHT. Lowe also served as the Kansas Poet Laureate from 2007-2009.
UPDATE: Please contact Denise Low, a Goodreads author, to purchase a copy. Red Mountain Press, Seattle, Washington is no longer.
Denise Low’s Wing Shares Themes with Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens
Review of Denise Low’s Wing.
72 pages 2021. Trade paperback. ISBN 978-1-952204-10-4.
By Lindsey Martin-Bowen
Set in the late Victorian era, Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Gardens in the Dunes,
centers around a young American Indian girl, Indigo, from the Sand Lizard tribe near Needles, California, and the intellectual woman, Hattie Palmer, who takes her in as a foster child. Through these main characters, and other “supporting” characters, such as Hattie’s Aunt Bronwyn, who observes and connects American Indian religion and culture to Ancient Tribes in England, Marmon Silko weaves themes of parallel theologies and myths that span humankind from the early tribes, such as the Saxons and Norsemen, of Great Britain to those in North America today.
In a similar vein, Denise Low’s use of archetypes—in her poetry in Wing evoke connections between American Indian culture and religion to tribes from those from which contemporary Western culture is descended. After opening with her frightening experience in the 2020 California fires (“The Moment of Danger, Walbridge Fire, 2020” and “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” (pp. 7-8), she wings through “How to Fold a Road Map” (p. 9), “Planetarium Experiment” (p. 10, and “Geographic Cure” (p.11) to draw the reader into a bird’s persona. And on page 12, that persona becomes evident:
“Kaw River Wings”
My arm span is a forgotten
measure
like a cubit—
half-length of a hand.
My shoulder blades clasp
paired muscled wings (p. 12).
The rhythms here move from a fluid “gliding” (much like a raven) in lines 1 and 2 to a staccato “flapping” in lines 3 through 6, emulating a crow’s flight movement. Thus, the book’s persona has become a bird, much like her “Christian grandmother” who “would return to the stars” (“Parallel Universe, No Multiverse” pp. 20-21).
In Native beliefs, eagles and a few other birds soar into the heavens to converse with spiritual beings to learn from them. Also in “Parallel Universe . . ., “ Low further supports that image with the persona’s revelation:
A psychic tells me I sleep
so hard because I go
to stars for instruction (ls 12-14, p. 20).
Denise Low’s Wing, a Review Martin-Bowen Page Two
My Christian grandmother said
she would return to the stars.
Each night I look for her.” (ls 15-17 p. 20).
Low employs more bird imagery in “The Last California Quail in San Francisco” (p. 36) wherein she and her husband bemoan the tendency to link “Native peoples to extinction narratives” (ls 2-3), especially ones such as housecats” . . . “hunting quail in Golden Gate Park”(ls 9-10) to “Ishi the Yahi man’s family murdered/by settlers. He ended up in a museum” (ls. 13-14). And she adds, if not the most renowned bird imagery in “My [Broken] [Forbidden] Indigenous Identity,” it must be close to it—a crow, which pops up in “Julie Buffalo Head’s painting” p. 45).
Silko also uses a bird, the crow, as a metaphor for Native tribespersons. Although the author’s metaphor vehicles between ancient Great Britain and Western European tribes are primarily via the characters and their endeavors in Gardens in the Dunes, she, too, along with the bird metaphor, employs poetry—in song form—to dramatize those connections in the last pages of the novel. There, her poem-songs not only read with the cadence of indigenous tribal songs, their rhythms and sounds
Bare cottonwood
Black with crows
They call
Snow clouds on the wind.
Snow clouds on the wind. (p.467)
We danced four nights.
We danced four nights.
The fourth dawn Messiah came.
The fourth dawn Messiah came. (p. 467)
Silko (continued)
I saw my slain sister, Buffalo.
I saw my slain brother, Condor.
Don’t cry, they told me.
Don’t cry. (p. 469)
Winds dance
In the green grass.
Winds dance
In the yellow flowers. (p. 469)
Both of Silko’s song-poems. like Low’s bird poems, use sparse, terse language and similar rhythms—akin to crows dancing.
Denise Low’s Wing, a Review Martin-Bowen Page Three
And the bird is neither Silko’s nor Low’s sole metaphor vehicle. After analyzing and displaying ink drawings of St. Brendan in 6th century annals, Norse knights, “First Contact: Interglacial Sagas” (p. 42), she connects drawings from indigenous people in Iceland and Newfoundland “Greenlandic Inuit/Newfoundland Inuit” (pp. 43-44)
to more contemporary North American natives:
“Munsee/Unami/Lenape to their south
[my grandfather’s people] (p. 44)
Further, like Silko, Low also weaves religious artifacts, artwork, and cultural icons from Indigenous peoples worldwide through the centuries to American Native tribes.
Her section of ekphrastic poetry links Christian imagery (and beliefs) in the paintings “St. John the Baptist’s Reliquary” (pp. 48-49), “First Death” (after The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin by Fra Angelico (p.50) to indigenous American Indian Tribes religions, including a sculpture, “Hy Dyve, Nick Cave’s Light Installation” (p.39).
Finally, she ties in her (or the persona’s) other heritage,
“Irish/Scots/English to their east
[my other grandfather’s people] (p. 44).
Along with European and Native American artwork, Low also reveals metaphysical-philosophical parallels in numerous poems: “Parallel Universe, No Multiverse” (pp. 20-21), “Hands” (about palmistry) (pp.16-18), “Left Brain/Right Brain”(p. 19), “Tasseomancy” (How to Read Tea Leaves) (p. 22), “My Heritage” centering on her “Native mother” and British “Grandmother Carrie” (p. 23), Psychic Encounters,” which include “My First Rosicrucian Experience” and “The Ghost Radar Application” (p.28), plus “Portal” (about a link to a parallel universe) (p. 65).
The poet’s persona slips into an alternative reality (which many tribes include in religious rites, similar to Wovoka’s renowned “Ghost Dance”) in the poem, “Within Fog” (her grandmother’s ghost) (pp. 66). All of these poems serve to connect European-rooted methods to interpret life’s meanings with Native approaches to philosophy and religion. Again, Silko also uses the characters and their endeavors to link the different cultures, and both authors show humanity—whether ancient tribes from the “old world” or more contemporary “New World Natives.”
And both writers exhibit the wisdom and spiritual clarity to recognize humankinds “divisions” are superficial. Humanity shares more DNA within its species than with any other. And their writings reveal differences between cultures remain more superficial than intrinsic.
—Lindsey Martin-Bowen
UPDATE: Please contact Denise Low, a Goodreads author, to purchase a copy. Red Mountain Press, Seattle, Washington is no longer.
Denise Low’s Wing Shares Themes with Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens
Review of Denise Low’s Wing.
72 pages 2021. Trade paperback. ISBN 978-1-952204-10-4.
By Lindsey Martin-Bowen
Set in the late Victorian era, Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Gardens in the Dunes,
centers around a young American Indian girl, Indigo, from the Sand Lizard tribe near Needles, California, and the intellectual woman, Hattie Palmer, who takes her in as a foster child. Through these main characters, and other “supporting” characters, such as Hattie’s Aunt Bronwyn, who observes and connects American Indian religion and culture to Ancient Tribes in England, Marmon Silko weaves themes of parallel theologies and myths that span humankind from the early tribes, such as the Saxons and Norsemen, of Great Britain to those in North America today.
In a similar vein, Denise Low’s use of archetypes—in her poetry in Wing evoke connections between American Indian culture and religion to tribes from those from which contemporary Western culture is descended. After opening with her frightening experience in the 2020 California fires (“The Moment of Danger, Walbridge Fire, 2020” and “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” (pp. 7-8), she wings through “How to Fold a Road Map” (p. 9), “Planetarium Experiment” (p. 10, and “Geographic Cure” (p.11) to draw the reader into a bird’s persona. And on page 12, that persona becomes evident:
“Kaw River Wings”
My arm span is a forgotten
measure
like a cubit—
half-length of a hand.
My shoulder blades clasp
paired muscled wings (p. 12).
The rhythms here move from a fluid “gliding” (much like a raven) in lines 1 and 2 to a staccato “flapping” in lines 3 through 6, emulating a crow’s flight movement. Thus, the book’s persona has become a bird, much like her “Christian grandmother” who “would return to the stars” (“Parallel Universe, No Multiverse” pp. 20-21).
In Native beliefs, eagles and a few other birds soar into the heavens to converse with spiritual beings to learn from them. Also in “Parallel Universe . . ., “ Low further supports that image with the persona’s revelation:
A psychic tells me I sleep
so hard because I go
to stars for instruction (ls 12-14, p. 20).
Denise Low’s Wing, a Review Martin-Bowen Page Two
My Christian grandmother said
she would return to the stars.
Each night I look for her.” (ls 15-17 p. 20).
Low employs more bird imagery in “The Last California Quail in San Francisco” (p. 36) wherein she and her husband bemoan the tendency to link “Native peoples to extinction narratives” (ls 2-3), especially ones such as housecats” . . . “hunting quail in Golden Gate Park”(ls 9-10) to “Ishi the Yahi man’s family murdered/by settlers. He ended up in a museum” (ls. 13-14). And she adds, if not the most renowned bird imagery in “My [Broken] [Forbidden] Indigenous Identity,” it must be close to it—a crow, which pops up in “Julie Buffalo Head’s painting” p. 45).
Silko also uses a bird, the crow, as a metaphor for Native tribespersons. Although the author’s metaphor vehicles between ancient Great Britain and Western European tribes are primarily via the characters and their endeavors in Gardens in the Dunes, she, too, along with the bird metaphor, employs poetry—in song form—to dramatize those connections in the last pages of the novel. There, her poem-songs not only read with the cadence of indigenous tribal songs, their rhythms and sounds
Bare cottonwood
Black with crows
They call
Snow clouds on the wind.
Snow clouds on the wind. (p.467)
We danced four nights.
We danced four nights.
The fourth dawn Messiah came.
The fourth dawn Messiah came. (p. 467)
Silko (continued)
I saw my slain sister, Buffalo.
I saw my slain brother, Condor.
Don’t cry, they told me.
Don’t cry. (p. 469)
Winds dance
In the green grass.
Winds dance
In the yellow flowers. (p. 469)
Both of Silko’s song-poems. like Low’s bird poems, use sparse, terse language and similar rhythms—akin to crows dancing.
Denise Low’s Wing, a Review Martin-Bowen Page Three
And the bird is neither Silko’s nor Low’s sole metaphor vehicle. After analyzing and displaying ink drawings of St. Brendan in 6th century annals, Norse knights, “First Contact: Interglacial Sagas” (p. 42), she connects drawings from indigenous people in Iceland and Newfoundland “Greenlandic Inuit/Newfoundland Inuit” (pp. 43-44)
to more contemporary North American natives:
“Munsee/Unami/Lenape to their south
[my grandfather’s people] (p. 44)
Further, like Silko, Low also weaves religious artifacts, artwork, and cultural icons from Indigenous peoples worldwide through the centuries to American Native tribes.
Her section of ekphrastic poetry links Christian imagery (and beliefs) in the paintings “St. John the Baptist’s Reliquary” (pp. 48-49), “First Death” (after The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin by Fra Angelico (p.50) to indigenous American Indian Tribes religions, including a sculpture, “Hy Dyve, Nick Cave’s Light Installation” (p.39).
Finally, she ties in her (or the persona’s) other heritage,
“Irish/Scots/English to their east
[my other grandfather’s people] (p. 44).
Along with European and Native American artwork, Low also reveals metaphysical-philosophical parallels in numerous poems: “Parallel Universe, No Multiverse” (pp. 20-21), “Hands” (about palmistry) (pp.16-18), “Left Brain/Right Brain”(p. 19), “Tasseomancy” (How to Read Tea Leaves) (p. 22), “My Heritage” centering on her “Native mother” and British “Grandmother Carrie” (p. 23), Psychic Encounters,” which include “My First Rosicrucian Experience” and “The Ghost Radar Application” (p.28), plus “Portal” (about a link to a parallel universe) (p. 65).
The poet’s persona slips into an alternative reality (which many tribes include in religious rites, similar to Wovoka’s renowned “Ghost Dance”) in the poem, “Within Fog” (her grandmother’s ghost) (pp. 66). All of these poems serve to connect European-rooted methods to interpret life’s meanings with Native approaches to philosophy and religion. Again, Silko also uses the characters and their endeavors to link the different cultures, and both authors show humanity—whether ancient tribes from the “old world” or more contemporary “New World Natives.”
And both writers exhibit the wisdom and spiritual clarity to recognize humankinds “divisions” are superficial. Humanity shares more DNA within its species than with any other. And their writings reveal differences between cultures remain more superficial than intrinsic.
—Lindsey Martin-Bowen
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews