Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

This week,  I’m showcasing poets from different tribal backgrounds in honor of Native American Heritage Month in the U.S..

Alienation is a common theme in the work of Native Americans, who frequently begin life speaking their people’s language, and then must adjust to English-only in order to get an education, often far from home, in the world of white America.  But the influence of their first languages and traditional story-telling are still present in their work.

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Our first poet is Leslie Marmon Silko (1948 – ), who is of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and Anglo-American heritage, which have all influenced her work, but she most often draws on Laguna myths and story-telling. After attending school on the Laguna reservation until the fifth grade, she was transferred to Catholic school in Albuquerque, away from her family and the familiar Keresan language of the Laguna, which she was forbidden to speak at the new school. In 1969, she received a BA from the University of New Mexico, and her first short story, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds,” was published.  A 1971 National Endowment for the Arts Discovery Grant enabled her to pursue a writing career alongside teaching at the University of Arizona-Tucson. Her first book of poetry, Laguna Woman, was published in 1974. A MacArthur “Genius” Award allowed her to quit teaching. Although better known for her novels, especially Ceremony, a unique work that incorporates poetry and mythology, Marmon Silko has also published four collections of poems, including Voices Under One Sky and Love Poem: Slim Man Canyon

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Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,’
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They’re all we have, you see.
All we have to fight off illness and death.
You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.
Their evil is mighty,
but it can’t stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories,
but the stories cannot be confused or forgotten.
They would like that.
They would be happy
because we would be defenseless then.
[He rubs his belly]
I keep it in here,
[he said]
Here, put your hand on it.
See?
It is moving.

Ts’ its’ tsi’ nako, Thought-Woman,
is sitting in her room
and what ever she thinks about
appears.
She thought of her sisters,
Nau’ ts’ ity’ i and I’ tcs’ i,
and together they created the Universe
this world
and the four worlds below.
Thought-Woman, the spider,
named things and
as she named them
they appeared.
She is sitting in her room
thinking of a story now
I’m telling you the story
she is thinking.

“Ceremony” from Ceremony, © 1977, 2006, by Leslie Marmon Silko – Penguin Classics

Ts’ its’ tsi’ nako, Thought-Woman, is the Laguna version of Spider Woman or Spider Grandmother, who appears in the myths and stories of many of the first peoples. She is a creator and namer of things, who flung a dew-covered web into the sky to make the stars. Her power makes her dangerous, so the Diné (Navajo) will only tell her stories during winter, “the season when Thunder sleeps.”

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