Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In parcels and particles, letters, images, repetitive themes, rhythms and sounds, Spirit Matters invites views into shadow spheres, of creative memory, reinvention of storied characters and place, as reminders of how poetry might turn longing, back to the very sound memory makes as we honor the imaginative lives of people and place. A collection of poetry, informed by irretrievable letters of loss, love, trauma, forged by musing on imagined relatives, living, dead, yet to be, shaped by spirit of places of we can never return to without understanding the living power of memory, story and song.--Gordon Henry
Synopsis
A major new collection of dazzling, surrealistic, entirely original poems by an award-winning Ojibwe author, whose work appears in two new Joy Harjo-edited anthologies
In parcels and particles, letters, images, repetitive themes, rhythms and sounds, Spirit Matters invites views into shadow spheres, of creative memory, reinvention of storied characters and place, as reminders of how poetry might turn longing, back to the very sound memory makes as we honor the imaginative lives of people and place. A collection of poetry, informed by irretrievable letters of loss, love, trauma, forged by musing on imagined relatives, living, dead, yet to be, shaped by spirit of places of we can never return to without understanding the living power of memory, story and song.
It was snowing on the monuments
My dead father's name next to my living mothers
You went further back into the cemetery
There where so many lies remain lost to winter
There with the named and the nameless
It was snowing on the monuments
All horizons packed with cloud cover
bodies
Some of us left in the vehicles
We came in
Some became some final gesture
Of departure's sun borne reflect
behind auto glass
heat blowing feeling back into a face
It was snowing on the monuments
Even in the warmth of an engine turning over
You must forget how we came to this place
How we leave
A procession of memory
an immersion in going away
music
Voices of older songs already
In the broken gone
As some wheel turns us back
Onto a gray road--Gordon Henry
Synopsis
A major new collection of dazzling, surrealistic, entirely original poems by an award-winning Ojibwe author, whose work appears in two new Joy Harjo-edited anthologies."Spirit Matters is haunted by people whose voices are so indelible they speak from a world beyond this one--a powerful country where stories are spells that inhabit the living. Gordon Henry has created a compelling, uncanny book."--Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Night Watchman, a novel
In parcels and particles, letters, images, repetitive themes, rhythms and sounds, "Spirit Matters" invites views into shadow spheres, of creative memory, reinvention of storied characters and place, as reminders of how poetry might turn longing, back to the very sound memory makes as we honor the imaginative lives of people and place. A collection of poetry, informed by irretrievable letters of loss, love, trauma, forged by musing on imagined relatives, living, dead, yet to be, shaped by spirit of places of we can never return to without understanding the living power of memory, story and song.
It was snowing on the monuments
My dead father's name next to my living mothers
You went further back into the cemetery
There where so many lies remain lost to winter
There with the named and the nameless
It was snowing on the monuments
All horizons packed with cloud cover
bodies
Some of us left in the vehicles
We came in
Some became some final gesture
Of departure's sun borne reflect
behind auto glass
heat blowing feeling back into a face
It was snowing on the monuments
Even in the warmth of an engine turning over
You must forget how we came to this place
How we leave
A procession of memory
an immersion in going away
music
Voices of older songs already
In the broken gone
As some wheel turns us back
Onto a gray road
--Gordon Henry
Synopsis
"Spirit Matters is haunted by people whose voices are so indelible they speak from a world beyond this one--a powerful country where stories are spells that inhabit the living. Gordon Henry has created a compelling, uncanny book."--Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Night Watchman, a novel
A major new collection of dazzling, surrealistic, entirely original poems by an American Book Award-winning Ojibwe author, whose work appears in two new Joy Harjo-edited anthologies.
In parcels and particles, letters, images, repetitive themes, rhythms and sounds, "Spirit Matters" invites views into shadow spheres, of creative memory, reinvention of storied characters and place, as reminders of how poetry might turn longing, back to the very sound memory makes as we honor the imaginative lives of people and place. A collection of poetry, informed by irretrievable letters of loss, love, trauma, forged by musing on imagined relatives, living, dead, yet to be, shaped by spirit of places of we can never return to without understanding the living power of memory, story and song.
It was snowing on the monuments
My dead father's name next to my living mothers
You went further back into the cemetery
There where so many lies remain lost to winter
There with the named and the nameless
It was snowing on the monuments
All horizons packed with cloud cover
bodies
Some of us left in the vehicles
We came in
Some became some final gesture
Of departure's sun borne reflect
behind auto glass
heat blowing feeling back into a face
It was snowing on the monuments
Even in the warmth of an engine turning over
You must forget how we came to this place
How we leave
A procession of memory
an immersion in going away
music
Voices of older songs already
In the broken gone
As some wheel turns us back
Onto a gray road
--Gordon Henry