A collection by an Indian poetess from California. In Blood Sisters, she writes: "I told you about the Maidu song my mother sang / in a scale I could never learn, / and about the tree on an old dirt road / where the white men lynched my people. /.../ We glance at one another / fall silent. / Americans do not know these things / nor do they want to know."
There are poets, and then there are real poets. Janice Gould was a real poet. A real poet lays it all down, gives it up, and leans into the sound worlds of words. She is willing to risk everything. The manner and stylings of the day, the meant to be impressive lyrical and theoretical gymnastics of poetics and construction that are tied to the moment, pass by unheeded. Janice Gould was absolutely herself in a poem. I believe that is the best you can say about any poet. She was vulnerable, which was one of her powers. She understood the power of lyric, and how it was utterly tied to music. She gave voice to a complicated identity, to being a Native woman in tortured lands, when to be a Native woman lands you at the bottom of a false power hierarchy. Janice was willing to risk and sacrifice, and see, to really see; her poetry became a tool for vision, compassion, and searing understanding. -- Joy Harjo, United States Poet Laureate via Amazon.com
Focusing on the intersection of identity, this collection of poems and narrations delves into the complexities of being a mixed-blood Native American. It reflects on the author's experiences growing up as an urban, lesbian individual in a middle-class environment in the West. Through its exploration of ancestral and familial connections, the work captures the evolving consciousness of cultural heritage and personal identity.
Tracing the West coast from Berkeley to Portland to Vancouver, these poems and prose poems track a migratory youth. Pushed north, the speaker wanders, working as she goes: "I was the girl who bucked hay, split wood, tore the ragged face of earth with the harrow's teeth." But even as the young speaker moves from place to place, often in pursuit of elusive lovers, a profound sense of belonging also pervades these poems. Gould is at home in her own desire, at home in a natural world that is textured, sensory, endlessly arresting. When she describes the place where "mice skittered in milkweed, moles burrowed under stinging nettle," we live there too, and fall a little more in love with this world, this speaker, this poet. -- Jane Hilberry, author of Still the Animals Enter and Body Painting (Colorado Book Award for Poetry) via Amazon.com