Week 3: Black Mountain Poetry
Critical Introduction:
Roszak, Suzanne Manizza. “Redefining Terms, Rethinking Concepts: Anticolonialism for All Ages from Erdrich to Santiago.”
Poetics:
Jake Skeets: Poetry as Field
Poetry:
Jake Skeets – A Walk in Tsaile
Joy Harjo – Eagle Poem (#6)
The Black Mountain school of poetry presents an interesting challenge when trying to find Indigenous poet representation. There are no records that indicate that any poet or writer that self-identifies as tribal, or Indigenous, or Native American ever attended Black Mountain College. Attending or teaching at Black Mountain College was not a requirement to be considered part of the Black Mountain school of poetry, but it did serve as a way to connect those poets to each other and to the presses that served them. Black Mountain poets often write in open form using projective verse, valuing the process more than the finished product. One of the hallmarks of this school of poetry involved crafting lines that follow the natural patterns of the breath. Other indicators of a Black Mountain poet are line fragments and precise language accompanied by direct statements, including the use of colloquialisms. In “Redefining Terms, Rethinking Concepts”, Suzanne Manizza Roszak quotes author Sandra Cisneros as saying about Joy Harjo that she is “a maverick” and that Harjo’s poetry is “a poetry that could be socially-minded and grounded in the language of working-class people” (74). Cisneros’ description about Harjo dovetails perfectly with Black Mountain school poetry.
In “Poetry as Field”, Jake Skeets discusses poetics in a way that makes use of a broad range of metaphorical concepts that tie poetry tightly to different art forms like weaving and painting. In bringing together so many types of art, making them interdependent, showcasing how, for the Diné, art is nothing more than function because everything is used daily, Skeets echoes the sentiments of the Black Mountain school without attending.
NDN Inclusion (#6):
Eagle Poem
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
In “A Walk in Tsaile”, Skeets pushes boundaries with typical poetic conventions. Done in open verse, Skeets makes use of the page in a way that is not constrained and bows to no particular form. Skeets makes use of fragmented lines with concise language that does not get in its own way. While it may seem experimental, the sense is that Skeets is very precise and knows exactly what he is doing with every word, every syllable. Likewise, Harjo’s “Eagle Poem”, with its emphasis on natural elements like the majestic bird and the connection to elemental forces, matches many of the conventions of Black Mountain poetry. Fragmented lines without meter or rhyme contribute to the sense that though Harjo has never been considered a Black Mountain poet, her work easily fits within various structures that define this school of poetry.
Week 4: New York school of poetry
Critical Introduction:
Shurbutt, S. Bailey. “Where Mountain Meets Atom, Within the Healing Circle: The Writing of Marilou Awiakta.”
Poetry:
Marilou Awiakta – “Mother Nature Sends a Pink Slip” (#7)
Dee Clancy – “My Own Personal Poem in Response to Frank O’Hara” (#8)
The New York school of poetry was a collaborative group of poets that drew inspiration from different mediums, especially art. This school, like the Black Mountain school, is characterized by experimentation in form and structure, as well as poems that, like Beat poetry, seem almost like a stream of consciousness flowing from the poet to the reader in a one-sided conversation. New York school poetry is personal and has a strong focus on individual expression, often using humor to get a point across. In “Where Mountain Meets Atom”, S. Bailey Shurbutt describes the poetry of Marilou Awiakta as “The linear narrative structure and the hierarchical genres and styles associated with patriarchal models that result from the binary masculine mind no longer suffice in this dangerous world in which we live” (202). This showcases that Awiakta pushes boundaries, and it is very personal for her. Shurbutt continues that “ Hers has been a personal Odyssey that has traversed a range of contemporary social, environmental, and feminist issues, expressed in a language and a style that is both politically charged and revolutionary in nature” (203). While Awiakta is not formally part of the New York school, her style easily places her within this realm.
NDN Inclusion (#7):
Mother Nature Sends a Pink Slip
To: Homo Sapiens
Re: Termination 
My business is producing life.
The bottom line is
you are not cost-effective workers.
Over the millennia, I have repeatedly
clarified my management goals and objectives.
Your failure to comply is well documented.
It stems from your inability to be
a team player:
- you interact badly with co-workers
- sabotage the machinery
- hold up production
- consume profits
In short, you are a disloyal species.
Within the last decade
I have given you three warnings:
- made the workplace too hot for you
- shaken up your home office
- utilized plague to cut back personnel
Your failure to take appropriate action
has locked these warnings into
the Phase-Out Mode, which will result
in termination. No appeal.
NDN Inclusion (#8):
My Own Personal Poem in Response to Frank O’Hara
And the message also seems to be that this
can be whatever it needs to be and maybe that is
part conversation part explanation part extrapolation
As long as the conversation keeps moving forward
maybe only goes in the opposite direction once
or twice if that’s really the direction it needs to go
but the important thing is that it just keeps moving
I’ve never thought of myself as a poet
for good reason because I don’t always understand
the conventions it takes to be considered good
Maybe that isn’t a thing that the good poets consider
though maybe it should be
or maybe it shouldn’t who am I to say
As I try to consider what it would take to undertake
a poem the entire undertaking overwhelms me
and I am left wondering and also
wandering through my mind trying to decide
if it’s better to rhyme or end the line on a
long pause but then I remember that the Greats
often just ended in the middle of a
conversation but that always made me wonder
Is that even a poem
In “Mother Nature Sends a Pink Slip”, Awiakta uses humor to get her point across that Mother Nature is fed up with the inhabitants of Earth. By bringing in the contemporary idea of global warming, Awiakta is referencing pop culture in much the same way that NYS poets do. Awiakta experiments with form and structure, using the framework of a letter without completing any lines. Also, the letter format from Mother Earth to Homo Sapiens is incredibly personal, another trait of the New York School. Likewise, the Clancy poem also draws on subtle humor, including both irony and sarcasm, to convey the idea that this poem is a poem because the poet claims it is a poem, regardless of if it falls within the conventions of a particular school of poetry. Like many poems indicative of the New York School, the Clancy poem begins in the middle of the action, leaving the reader with a feeling of an interrupted conversation, an idea incomplete. While not in any way on par with the Awiakta poem, this was the only original piece I produced during the course, so I felt it would be remiss of me not to include it here.
Week 5: Confessional and Deep Image Poetry
Critical Introduction:
Scarry, John. “Representing Real Worlds: The Evolving Poetry of Joy Harjo”
Poetics:
Navarro, Carmen García. “Joy Harjo’s Poetics of Memory and Resilience”
Poetry:
Joy Harjo – “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings”
In Deep Image poetry, the focus is on how a direct or concrete image can lend itself to poetic meaning. Poets in this school rely on the real to connect in some way to the surreal, or to something beyond the realm of logic. In this way, this poetry can take on an otherworldly tone, especially with the use of vivid imagery to describe a setting or situation. Noted scholar and writing instructor John Scarry describes Harjo’s work in “Representing Real Worlds” as “This apparent surreality of many of Harjo’s settings and situations is not really a distortion; it is simply a presentation of reality observed through the poet’s prism” (286). Scarry understands that Harjo means to share her truth in a way that feels most natural to her, based on her Native American upbringing – by involving elements of myth and the supernatural into the everyday because that is her reality. Scarry notes that “the poetic fluidity of Harjo’s simultaneous physicality and spirituality, and her ability to combine the eternal past and the continuing present” make her poetry enduring and eternal (287). This fluidity between the real and surreal, the concrete world and the inner sanctum of the psyche, are all part of the Deep Image school of poetry.
Joy Harjo
In “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings”, Harjo attempts to set up rules to follow in the event that there is conflict between different classes of creatures, some more holy than others. From the start, there is a blurring of reality as Harjo attempts to cement the idea of something practical, like resolving conflict, into the spiritual realm by involving spirits and the idea of land stewardship. Harjo personifies “remembering” with a red shimmer, and attempts to incorporate psychoanalytic concepts into this concrete framework of a logical resolution. At some point, though the framework of the resolution remains, the inner workings devolve into very personal instructions. Harjo’s poem has all of the markings of a Deep Image poem.
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