Miskwagoode
In Miskwagoode,the octogenarian Anishinaabe poet, playwright, storyteller, performance artist, activist, and critic Annharte returns to her origins to reconcile herself to her new role as an elder of the Little Saskatchewan First Nation. The book opens with the poet puzzling over homophones while recalling her mother’s disappearance when Annharte was nine years old: “What is a difference between motherless and mother loss?” The measured tone of this questioning is soon replaced by a persistent stream of lyrics that refuse to cede any forward momentum:
opportunity to decode exotic message display
revealed in designated special Elder gathering
granny circles may offer great straight forward
advice or personal insight shared by those present
make sense of collective past plus extravagant promise
Enjambment and lack of punctuation entangle the poet’s lyrics like razor wire, making it impossible to extricate one thought from the next. If at times the nonstop rattle seems didactic or exhausting, that’s probably the point. For a writer whose entire oeuvre seeks to counter colonial narratives and to complicate Indigenous experience, it should come as no surprise that readers may find themselves frustrated. But the book’s standout moments occur when Annharte parts the streams of thought to isolate individual stories. “Lost Bird of Wounded Knee” recounts the tragic story of Zintkála Nuni, a Lakota baby survivor of the massacre who was raised by a white soldier. “Walk This Way So No One Notices” depicts, through a series of tercets, each of which is followed by a single line, the speaker’s failed attempts to help her drunken mother stagger home. But there are also glimmers of humor that shine through this collection, as in these lines from “Jack Identity”:
Act one
never get around to complete
illusive self
Keep promises to empty closet
sever superficial duplicates
replace tireless fragments
let go let out let be
imaginary indigeneity