Today's Poet - Wendy Rose
Wendy Rose is one of my favorite contemporary poets. She's a mixed blood Native American, twice nominated for the Pulitzer, and the author of more than a dozen books of poetry. She's also an anthropologist and teaches American Studies.
I first encountered the Rose's work in an American Lit survey course in college. It was my last semester and I still needed an early Amer. Lit. class for my degree. It was the only one being offered and was mostly underclassmen, non-English majors. All white, mostly middle- to upperclass kids who knew nothing of Native life. My professor and I (both mixed blood) were often amused by their reactions to Rose and other Native American poets. Anyway...
The following is from From Totem to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002 ed. by Ishmael Reed. It's a great book covering everyone from Gertrude Stein to Tupac Shakur.
For the Angry White Student Who Wanted to Know If I Thought White People Ever Did Anything Good for "the Indians"
O yes I told her.
First of all
there's Haagen-Dazs
though
we had to supply
the flavors
and Siberians learned
to freeze it.
I would not
forget
the wheat and raisins
for cinnamon rolls,
the English dough
into which
is put
our sweet potato
or pumpkin sauce,
whipped cream on top
from tough Highland cows.
And bluejeans are good
though it was
our cotton they used
with staple long enough
to be spun and dyed
with indigo from India.
And the horse
was a good thing
I like horses
big enough to pull
the tipi poles
drag travois across
the cratered plain
so punched with holes
that wheels bog down.
And coffee, canned peaches,
oranges and sugar
from reeds selected and cut
by our sea--going cousins
and melons
so like our gourds
but soft and sweet,
the oasis
within August.
Computers, boots, baroque music,
paper more fragile than birch
to replace Mayan books burned
by Spanish tantrums.
Typewriters, trucks, rock 'n' roll,
electric lights, polished steel
for the knife and the ax. And guns, outboard motors,
customers
willing to be silent
as we auction off the days
remaining.
And now for a moosesal original. You're just dying with anticipation, I'm sure. ;)
A Blessed Childhood
I never lived on a reservation,
but my mother did.
And that was enough
to mean that I never would.
Instead, there was a trailer
park in Texas;
Apartments with hookers
on the playground and crack pipes
in the laundry room;
Neighboorhoods where
my lily white skin
was the exception to the rule.
College was culture shock.
Rich, white kids
everywhere. Rare was student
blessed with real knowledge
of the world.
I first encountered the Rose's work in an American Lit survey course in college. It was my last semester and I still needed an early Amer. Lit. class for my degree. It was the only one being offered and was mostly underclassmen, non-English majors. All white, mostly middle- to upperclass kids who knew nothing of Native life. My professor and I (both mixed blood) were often amused by their reactions to Rose and other Native American poets. Anyway...
The following is from From Totem to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002 ed. by Ishmael Reed. It's a great book covering everyone from Gertrude Stein to Tupac Shakur.
For the Angry White Student Who Wanted to Know If I Thought White People Ever Did Anything Good for "the Indians"
O yes I told her.
First of all
there's Haagen-Dazs
though
we had to supply
the flavors
and Siberians learned
to freeze it.
I would not
forget
the wheat and raisins
for cinnamon rolls,
the English dough
into which
is put
our sweet potato
or pumpkin sauce,
whipped cream on top
from tough Highland cows.
And bluejeans are good
though it was
our cotton they used
with staple long enough
to be spun and dyed
with indigo from India.
And the horse
was a good thing
I like horses
big enough to pull
the tipi poles
drag travois across
the cratered plain
so punched with holes
that wheels bog down.
And coffee, canned peaches,
oranges and sugar
from reeds selected and cut
by our sea--going cousins
and melons
so like our gourds
but soft and sweet,
the oasis
within August.
Computers, boots, baroque music,
paper more fragile than birch
to replace Mayan books burned
by Spanish tantrums.
Typewriters, trucks, rock 'n' roll,
electric lights, polished steel
for the knife and the ax. And guns, outboard motors,
customers
willing to be silent
as we auction off the days
remaining.
And now for a moosesal original. You're just dying with anticipation, I'm sure. ;)
A Blessed Childhood
I never lived on a reservation,
but my mother did.
And that was enough
to mean that I never would.
Instead, there was a trailer
park in Texas;
Apartments with hookers
on the playground and crack pipes
in the laundry room;
Neighboorhoods where
my lily white skin
was the exception to the rule.
College was culture shock.
Rich, white kids
everywhere. Rare was student
blessed with real knowledge
of the world.