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Overview
In this important new collection, her first in fourteen years, award-winning author Louise Erdrich has selected poems from her two previous books of poetry, Jacklight and Baptism of Desire, and has added nineteen new poems to compose Original Fire.
Synopsis
In this important new collection, her first in fourteen years, award-winning author Louise Erdrich has selected poems from her two previous books of poetry, Jacklight and Baptism of Desire, and has added nineteen new poems to compose Original Fire.
Publishers Weekly
Though a multiply award-winning novelist, Erdrich (Love Medicine, etc.) throughout the 1980s remained committed to verse; poems from Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1989) represent her in many anthologies, some of them focused on Ojibwe heritage. This third book of poems begins with Erdrich's earliest work (much of it indebted to Richard Hugo), moves through a series of prose tales about the long-lived potato-trickster Potchikoo, then opens out into a mix of new and old verse. "All graves are pregnant with our nearest kin," Erdrich writes, and many of her poems regard first and last things-motherhood, family, death and mourning-sometimes as mythical universals, sometimes as they take place on reservations or in cold, forlorn small towns, each with its misfit (like "Step-and-a-Half Waleski") and its patron saint (the sarcastic "Rez Litany," the rapt "Seven Sleepers"). "The relentless throat call/ of physical love," and religions designed to deflect it, animate some of Erdrich's new sequences, which incorporate fairy tales, Christian ritual and reservation lore. Though her stark lines owe much (sometimes too much) to Louise Gl ck, Erdrich's particular landscapes and affiliations, and her way with myths and talismans, ensure that her poems, new and old, retain strengths all their own. (Oct.) Forecast: This volume seems designed to work in tandem with Erdrich's next novel, The Master Butcher's Singing Club, which shares scenes and characters with "The Butcher's Wife," a poetic sequence included here: expect joint reviews, especially in the upper Midwest, where Erdrich makes her home, and runs a bookstore. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
Los Angeles Times Book Review
"The poems are hypnotic and retain an emphatic passionate fire."Miami Herald
"Artistically impressive and highly entertaining."Booklist
"Erdrich is profoundly sensual, frankly bawdy and slyly comedic."Miami Herald
“Artistically impressive and highly entertaining.”Booklist
“Erdrich is profoundly sensual, frankly bawdy and slyly comedic.”Los Angeles Times Book Review
“The poems are hypnotic and retain an emphatic passionate fire.”Publishers Weekly
Though a multiply award-winning novelist, Erdrich (Love Medicine, etc.) throughout the 1980s remained committed to verse; poems from Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1989) represent her in many anthologies, some of them focused on Ojibwe heritage. This third book of poems begins with Erdrich's earliest work (much of it indebted to Richard Hugo), moves through a series of prose tales about the long-lived potato-trickster Potchikoo, then opens out into a mix of new and old verse. "All graves are pregnant with our nearest kin," Erdrich writes, and many of her poems regard first and last things-motherhood, family, death and mourning-sometimes as mythical universals, sometimes as they take place on reservations or in cold, forlorn small towns, each with its misfit (like "Step-and-a-Half Waleski") and its patron saint (the sarcastic "Rez Litany," the rapt "Seven Sleepers"). "The relentless throat call/ of physical love," and religions designed to deflect it, animate some of Erdrich's new sequences, which incorporate fairy tales, Christian ritual and reservation lore. Though her stark lines owe much (sometimes too much) to Louise Gl ck, Erdrich's particular landscapes and affiliations, and her way with myths and talismans, ensure that her poems, new and old, retain strengths all their own. (Oct.) Forecast: This volume seems designed to work in tandem with Erdrich's next novel, The Master Butcher's Singing Club, which shares scenes and characters with "The Butcher's Wife," a poetic sequence included here: expect joint reviews, especially in the upper Midwest, where Erdrich makes her home, and runs a bookstore. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.VOYA
Erdrich's collection of new and old works includes five sections: Jacklight contains poems inspired by life on Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. The Potchikoo Stories is a series of Chippewa trickster fables. The Butcher's Wife is based on the characters in Erdrich's novel, The Master Butchers Singing Club (HarperCollins, 2003). The Seven Sleepers offers surreal poems, some speculating on the lives of Roman Catholic saints, Jesus Christ, and Mary Magdalene, and other poems satirizing the victimization of Native Americans by the "Holy Colonial Church." Original Fire comprises poems about life, death, and everything in between. Poems based on characters from Erdrich's novels stand adequately on their own although reading the novels might make the poems more meaningful. Some poems in The Seven Sleepers might jump too quickly from metaphor to metaphor, especially for young readers, who also might find some of the topics and viewpoints in the Original Fire section slanted more toward adults. Erdrich's poems about life on the reservation are the heart of this book. She makes brilliant use of detail, such as her description of the "inflammable mansmell" of her alcoholic Uncle Ray, a blend of "hair tonic, ashes [and] alcohol." Combinations of poems often have a powerful synergy, with one poem contributing to the meaning of another. "Rez Litany," for example, explains the effects of substandard healthcare and "commodity food" on reservation dwellers, insight that enhances the reader's understanding of "Family Reunion," in which the narrator's uncle's "bad heart . . . knocks and rattles at the bars of his ribs." Although accessible, Erdrich's poetry is also dense with meaning, andre-readings will enhance both enjoyment and understanding. VOYA Codes: 4Q 3P S A/YA (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed book recommended for Young Adults). 2003, HarperCollins, 159p., Ages 15 to Adult.—James Blasingame