Sherry Chandler » Rexroth on Native Americans
Rexroth on Native Americans
Here’s the opening passage from Kenneth Rexroth’s American Poetry in the Twentieth Century (The Seabury Press, 1973):
The long-term tendencies in American poetry reflect the major influences that went to form the culture as a whole and these in turn the ethnic and national groups who have made up the American people.
First in point of time of course was the American Indian, and the Indian endures as subtle, all-pervasive background, both in vestiges of Indian cultural contributions in a positive sense, and in reverse, as the sense of guilt which haunts American history. At no time except at the very beginning has there not been somewhere, on the part of some poet, an attempt to incorporate directly the Indian heritage. Equally important to the traditionally raised children of older families, the Indians took the places of the deities of earth and air, of springs and trees and mountains. They were the satyrs and nymphs of the American child, his connection with the earth beneath his feet. People reared in our contemporary society of urban nomads, broken families, computerized education, and televised leisure can form no conception of the role played by tales of the American Indian in the older, more stable society.
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2 Comments
1. Terry replies at 6th January 2007, 10:45 pm :
For an reality view of the Indian experience, I highly recommend the works of Sherman Alexie. I’ve been lucky enough to attend several of his lectures and readings, as well as read most of his poetry, short stories and novels. The contrast to that romanticized image is very educational. If you’re unfamiliar with him, I’d start with “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” and “First Indian on the Moon.”
I’m lucky that he’s a semi-local and appears regularly here.
2. sherry replies at 7th January 2007, 7:56 am :
I could not agree more, Terry. Alexie is an excellent poet and a reality check. I am in awe of his intelligence.
Our relationship with Native Americans has always been pathological — a theme I am hoping to follow up on here a bit in the next few days.
There’s a passage in Wendell Berry — I’m not sure where now — in which the Kentucky farmer feels his mystical connection to the Old Ones. And it’s at that point that the whole myth of the heroic settler followed by the holy farmer comes tumbling down for me. We only have this land because we took it by subterfuge, force, and genocide. And then we co-opt some garbled form of the religion, too.
But, better that than the P.J. O’Rourke version of America in which no wild river should be more valuable than low-wage jobs.
Just to keep in theme, here is an awesome Alexie poem in the Beloit Poetry Journal. It’s called “Defending Walt Whitman.”
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