Book
Original fire : selected and new poems
Record details
- ISBN: 9780060935344 (softcover)
-
Physical Description:
print
158 pages ; 23 cm - Publisher: New York : Harper Perennial, 2004.
- Copyright: ©2003
Content descriptions
| Formatted Contents Note: | Jacklight. Jacklight -- The woods -- The strange people -- Captivity -- Owls -- I was sleeping where the black oaks move -- Family reunion -- Indian boarding school : the runaways -- Dear John Wayne -- Manitoulin ghost -- Three sisters -- The Lefavor girls -- Walking in the breakdown lane -- The red sleep of beasts -- The Potchikoo stories. The birth of Potchikoo -- Potchikoo marries -- How Potchikoo got old -- The death of Potchikoo -- Potchikoo's life after death -- How they don't let Potchikoo into heaven -- Where Potchikoo goes next -- Potchikoo's detour -- Potchikoo greets Josette -- Potchikoo restored -- Potchikoo's mean twin -- How Josette takes care of it -- Saint Potchikoo -- The butcher's wife. The butcher's wife -- The pull from the left -- The Carmelites -- Clouds -- Shelter -- The slow sting of her company -- Here is a good word for Step-and-a-half Waleski -- Portrait of the town Leonard -- Leonard commits redeeming adulteries with all the women in town -- Unexpected dangers -- My name repeated on the lips of the dead -- A mother's hell -- Rudy comes back -- New vows -- The seven sleepers. Fooling God -- The sacraments -- The seven sleepers -- Avila -- Saint Clare -- Mary Magdalene -- Christ's twin -- Orozco's Christ -- The Savior -- The buffalo prayer -- Rez litany -- Original fire. The fence -- Ninth month -- Birth -- New mother -- Sorrows of the Frog Woman -- Time -- Spring evening on Blind Mountain -- Blue -- Thistles -- Best friends in the first grade -- Little blue eyeglasses -- Grief -- Wood mountain -- Advice to myself -- Morning fire -- Asiniig. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Indigenous peoples -- North America -- Poetry American poetry Indigenous authors -- North America -- Poetry |
| Genre: | Poetry. |
| Topic Heading: | Indigenous. First Nations. |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at University College of the North Libraries.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Pas Campus Library | PS 3555 .R42 O75 2004 (Text) | 58500000808899 | Stacks | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2003 September #2
Erdrich's fecund poems are seedbeds for her acclaimed novels, a key facet of her work newly revealed in this soul-rocking collection, her first volume of poetry in 14 years. An irrepressible storyteller, Erdrich writes supple and cunning narrative poems about families, lovers, and trickster figures as mischievous in the afterlife as they were in the flesh. Both body and spirit fascinate Erdrich because they are born of and sustained by the life force she calls the "original fire." Reflecting on her Ojibwa and European heritages, Erdrich is profoundly sensual, frankly bawdy, and slyly comedic. Deeply attuned to the sacred as it is manifest in everything from sunlight to stones to water to plants and animals, Erdrich grapples with both Native American and Christian beliefs, and the conflicts ignited by the friction between them, in poems of sweet gratitude, voluptuous ecstasy, cutting satire, seething grief, and fiery resolve. "I'm wild for everything," writes Erdrich, a poet who is, indeed, open to and inspirited by the radiance and heat, crackle and insistence of life. ((Reviewed September 15, 2003)) Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews August #1
Well known and respected for her fiction (e.g., Love Medicine), Erdrich is an accomplished poet. With this volume, drawn from two previous collections and including 100 pages of new poems, she presents her first collection in over a decade. The progression of her interests as a poet is evident here and clearly parallels her fiction. Poems from the first collection chronicle her Native American childhood and early schooling, while those from the second rework or invent Native American mythology. The new poems are more rooted in Catholicism and life as a middle-class American, yet they are imbued with an animistic spirit that is part of her heritage. A wonderful series of poems to various saints culminates unexpectedly in "Rez Litany," a tour de force of all the harm done by the church to those on the reservations, including those "who preside now in heaven/ at the gates of the Grand Casino Buffet." After concluding this poem with a plea for protection of "fourteen-year-old mothers," Erdrich moves into the book's final section, on childbirth and mothering, from which the book takes its title. Essential reading for fans of Erdrich's fiction, this volume can be expected to draw poetry readers into the fold.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2003 October #1
Though a multiply award-winning novelist, Erdrich (Love Medicine, etc.) throughout the 1980s remained committed to verse; poems from Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1989) represent her in many anthologies, some of them focused on Ojibwe heritage. This third book of poems begins with Erdrich's earliest work (much of it indebted to Richard Hugo), moves through a series of prose tales about the long-lived potato-trickster Potchikoo, then opens out into a mix of new and old verse. "All graves are pregnant with our nearest kin," Erdrich writes, and many of her poems regard first and last things-motherhood, family, death and mourning-sometimes as mythical universals, sometimes as they take place on reservations or in cold, forlorn small towns, each with its misfit (like "Step-and-a-Half Waleski") and its patron saint (the sarcastic "Rez Litany," the rapt "Seven Sleepers"). "The relentless throat call/ of physical love," and religions designed to deflect it, animate some of Erdrich's new sequences, which incorporate fairy tales, Christian ritual and reservation lore. Though her stark lines owe much (sometimes too much) to Louise Glück, Erdrich's particular landscapes and affiliations, and her way with myths and talismans, ensure that her poems, new and old, retain strengths all their own. (Oct.) Forecast: This volume seems designed to work in tandem with Erdrich's next novel, The Master Butcher's Singing Club, which shares scenes and characters with "The Butcher's Wife," a poetic sequence included here: expect joint reviews, especially in the upper Midwest, where Erdrich makes her home, and runs a bookstore. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. - Voice of Youth Advocates Reviews : VOYA Reviews 2004 April
Erdrich's collection of new and old works includes five sections: Jacklight contains poems inspired by life on Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. The Potchikoo Stories is a series of Chippewa trickster fables. The Butcher's Wife is based on the characters in Erdrich's novel, The Master Butchers Singing Club (HarperCollins, 2003). The Seven Sleepers offers surreal poems, some speculating on the lives of Roman Catholic saints, Jesus Christ, and Mary Magdalene, and other poems satirizing the victimization of Native Americans by the "Holy Colonial Church." Original Fire comprises poems about life, death, and everything in between. Poems based on characters from Erdrich's novels stand adequately on their own although reading the novels might make the poems more meaningful. Some poems in The Seven Sleepers might jump too quickly from metaphor to metaphor, especially for young readers, who also might find some of the topics and viewpoints in the Original Fire section slanted more toward adults Erdrich's poems about life on the reservation are the heart of this book. She makes brilliant use of detail, such as her description of the "inflammable mansmell" of her alcoholic Uncle Ray, a blend of "hair tonic, ashes [and] alcohol." Combinations of poems often have a powerful synergy, with one poem contributing to the meaning of another. "Rez Litany," for example, explains the effects of substandard healthcare and "commodity food" on reservation dwellers, insight that enhances the reader's understanding of "Family Reunion," in which the narrator's uncle's "bad heart . . . knocks and rattles at the bars of his ribs." Although accessible, Erdrich's poetry is also dense with meaning, and re-readings will enhance both enjoyment and understanding.-James Blasingame 4Q 3P S A/YA Copyright 2004 Voya Reviews.
