Nickel eclipse : Iroquois moon : poems and paintings

Gansworth, Eric 1965- (author.).

Summary: Nickel Eclipse is a merging of personal and cultural history. Structured in part like the alternating colored beads on a wampum belt, patterns emerge from this exploration of contemporary life on an eastern Indian reservation and the sometimes tenuous persistence of a culture after centuries of survival within another, more dominant, culture. The poems, while highly personalized, reflect the tension of speakers surviving within-though never fully of-that larger culture, where lives are formed and meaning defined by their inherent separateness. Gansworth's paintings complement the poems, using the metaphor of the cycle of moons identified in the traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) culture's calendar. These paintings of the different lunar phases serve to organize the poems around a common image, breaking them into sections through the use of an eclipse. Additionally, the relationships indigenous communities have had with the United States-from thriving to near extinction to eventual re- emergence-are symbolized in the progression of that eclipse across the moon. Symbols common to the culture appear throughout the cycles: the Three Sisters (Corn, Beans, and Squash), Strawberries, and Green Corn, from the ceremonies named for them, and more consistently, wampum beads-within which Haudenosaunee culture is iconographically documented-appear in various incarnations, from the earliest shell groupings, through isolated shaped beads, small strings, and full- belt formations.

Record details

ISBN: 9780870135644 (softcover)
Physical Description: print
xiv, 187 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Publisher: East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, [2000]
Copyright: ©2000

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

Reservation Architects -- The Children Shout at My Door But I Am Too Far Away to Hear -- Just Lately -- Requiem for the Little People -- On the Lack of Needing My Indian Celebrity Sunglasses -- The Final Cut -- Reservations Required -- Waiting for You at the Fountain Outside Lincoln Center -- Her Little Red Cabin in the Mountains -- Placemaps -- War Pony -- Vulnerability -- My Sister's Back Yard -- Mystic Powers (II) -- The Reservation Knows Your Name as Well as I -- Fishing with You -- Trading Up -- The Gifts of Our Fathers -- Stinkpot -- Baggage Claim -- Skins at Dinner -- Four Kitchens In the State -- Iroquois Backboard Rebound Song (I) -- Iroquois Backboard Rebound Song (II) -- Iroquois Backboard Rebound Song (III) -- My Hair Was Shorter Then -- Fourteen Years Later I Still Want to Pick Up the Phone -- Walking a Mile in His Wingtips -- Immersion -- Spanish Lessons -- Song for a Snapping Turtle Rattle -- Father and Sun -- Transportation -- Late August Sunsets -- Night Music -- A Few Good Jokes -- The Annoyance of Evolution -- On Meeting My Father in a Bar for the First Time -- Toronto, More or Less, in Fifteen Years -- These Nights I Know You Have Struck a Deal with My Mother -- Home Work -- Sirens -- Mystic Powers (I) -- Wine and Cheese -- The Dirt on My Hands -- Fall Leaves -- Your Garden -- Birthday Wishes -- Black Leather Jacket -- Traditional Blanket -- The Favorite Recipe Card of Many a Reservation Woman or Sunday Brunch, Reservations -- This Last Glass -- Her Dreams -- That Old Falseface -- Outgrowing the Zeigler -- Dream House -- Passing Through Breaking Glass -- Old Woman in a New Room -- Over Coffee -- Flight -- Indian Religion at the Turn of the Century -- The Old Moccasin Dance Is Sometimes Not Enough -- It Goes Something Like This.