Interview with Susan Deer Cloud
Iceland
Poet Susan Deer Cloud is a mixed lineage Catskill Mountain Indian who has returned to her “heart country” to live once again with foxes, black bears, bald eagles, great blue herons, and the ghosts of panthers and ancestors. An alumna of Goddard College (MFA) and Binghamton University (B.A. & M.A.), she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, two New York State Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and a Chenango County Council for the Arts Individual Artist Grant. Published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, some of her books are Braiding Starlight, Car Stealer, The Last Ceremony, Fox Mountain & Hunger Moon. For more, you can write to her at [email protected], visit her website at http://sites.google.com/site/susandeercloud/ or greet her among the sacred hoop stars and Manitou dawn mists.
Catskill Mountains
Teresa: Can you tell us about the Catskill Mountains and its significance to you and your writing?
Susan: I grew up in the Catskill Mountain region called the Borscht Belt after the Jewish people who came from the New York metropolitan area to vacation in the Jewish hotels and bungalow colonies (the films “Dirty Dancing” and “A Walk on the Moon” are fairly good at conveying what the hotels and colonies were like). Quite a few of those vacationers were Russian and Eastern European immigrants who relished eating borscht. A commingling of immigrants and indigenous people, my mother and her extended family had deep roots in the Catskills. I refer to the area as the “Manitou Mountains,” Manitou being the spirit that pervades everything and all of us. In some places Manitou manifests more powerfully, including in the Catskills or Native-named Onteora, Land in the Sky. One can especially glimpse such presence in the mountains’ smoky blue mists and mystery lights. The Manitou Mountains early on nourished my desire to stay close to Mother Earth’s forests, meadows, rivers and lakes. However, the Borscht Belt was a meld of country, town and city, and I certainly could hardly wait to leave the small town and some of its provincialism.
Susan: I grew up in the Catskill Mountain region called the Borscht Belt after the Jewish people who came from the New York metropolitan area to vacation in the Jewish hotels and bungalow colonies (the films “Dirty Dancing” and “A Walk on the Moon” are fairly good at conveying what the hotels and colonies were like). Quite a few of those vacationers were Russian and Eastern European immigrants who relished eating borscht. A commingling of immigrants and indigenous people, my mother and her extended family had deep roots in the Catskills. I refer to the area as the “Manitou Mountains,” Manitou being the spirit that pervades everything and all of us. In some places Manitou manifests more powerfully, including in the Catskills or Native-named Onteora, Land in the Sky. One can especially glimpse such presence in the mountains’ smoky blue mists and mystery lights. The Manitou Mountains early on nourished my desire to stay close to Mother Earth’s forests, meadows, rivers and lakes. However, the Borscht Belt was a meld of country, town and city, and I certainly could hardly wait to leave the small town and some of its provincialism.
Teresa: Your poems address such important social, political and class issues...can you please tell us about how these issues inspire your poetry?
Susan: These issues naturally tie in with an expression first used for the title of a women’s liberation paper by Carol Hanisch in 1970: “The personal is political.” They became an integral part of my existence before I had acquired sufficient education and vocabulary to express what it felt like to grow up female, a mountain person, poor and “part Indian” (the expression used for mixed lineage Natives). Being born to such realities and identities turned my world upside down, especially once I entered kindergarten and got a big dose of what power structure is all about. Being an “outsider” is one of the greatest teachers a child can have in life because it compels a person to question any false authority, see through lies, and rebel against that which is untruthful and unjust. Very early on I questioned what was in school textbooks, what my teachers said, and what I saw and heard on the big screen (my family did not have a television until I was eight). The depictions of Native people in the cowboy-and-Indian movies and of girls and women in countless Hollywood films was dreadful. I certainly did not find my mother, my maternal grandfather, or any of my other indigenous relatives to be murderous and ignorant savages. Furthermore, I felt befuddled by how girls were expected to behave, all non-stop smiling nice and tame in starched frilly dresses with few choices in life. I was shocked when adults told me I could not run free in the same way the boys did or get cool toys like barn sets and little horses, pigs and cows for Christmas. Me being me, I quickly embraced my inner tomboy and as much as possible avoided being molded into the stereotype of what a girl was supposed to be. I had no interest in “playing house” but wanted to be out in the woods and meadows, near the rivers and lakes. My father brought home a tri-colored pen from his job one time and I used it to paint all my dolls’ faces in Indian warpath designs. O the symbolism. Understand, I am referring to the 1950s and much of the 1960s before America blew up into one big sexual/cultural/political revolution. Yet even now, in 2015, I keep finding out that girls still have some of the same pressures brought to bear on them, including being impossibly perfectly pretty. And given the figures on rape, it is clear they are still being viewed as things there for the taking.
Susan: These issues naturally tie in with an expression first used for the title of a women’s liberation paper by Carol Hanisch in 1970: “The personal is political.” They became an integral part of my existence before I had acquired sufficient education and vocabulary to express what it felt like to grow up female, a mountain person, poor and “part Indian” (the expression used for mixed lineage Natives). Being born to such realities and identities turned my world upside down, especially once I entered kindergarten and got a big dose of what power structure is all about. Being an “outsider” is one of the greatest teachers a child can have in life because it compels a person to question any false authority, see through lies, and rebel against that which is untruthful and unjust. Very early on I questioned what was in school textbooks, what my teachers said, and what I saw and heard on the big screen (my family did not have a television until I was eight). The depictions of Native people in the cowboy-and-Indian movies and of girls and women in countless Hollywood films was dreadful. I certainly did not find my mother, my maternal grandfather, or any of my other indigenous relatives to be murderous and ignorant savages. Furthermore, I felt befuddled by how girls were expected to behave, all non-stop smiling nice and tame in starched frilly dresses with few choices in life. I was shocked when adults told me I could not run free in the same way the boys did or get cool toys like barn sets and little horses, pigs and cows for Christmas. Me being me, I quickly embraced my inner tomboy and as much as possible avoided being molded into the stereotype of what a girl was supposed to be. I had no interest in “playing house” but wanted to be out in the woods and meadows, near the rivers and lakes. My father brought home a tri-colored pen from his job one time and I used it to paint all my dolls’ faces in Indian warpath designs. O the symbolism. Understand, I am referring to the 1950s and much of the 1960s before America blew up into one big sexual/cultural/political revolution. Yet even now, in 2015, I keep finding out that girls still have some of the same pressures brought to bear on them, including being impossibly perfectly pretty. And given the figures on rape, it is clear they are still being viewed as things there for the taking.
Teresa: When did you know that you would be a poet and how did you become a poet?
Susan: I was born a storyteller and a poet. I knew I was a dream-weaver and word-beader from the moment I could first formulate a complete thought, and once I could read books on my own I also envisioned writing my own books and getting them published.
Photo: Susan Deer Cloud & Evan T. Pritchard
Susan: I was born a storyteller and a poet. I knew I was a dream-weaver and word-beader from the moment I could first formulate a complete thought, and once I could read books on my own I also envisioned writing my own books and getting them published.
Photo: Susan Deer Cloud & Evan T. Pritchard
Teresa: What is it like being a poet in our day and age on Turtle Island?
Susan: I am inclined to say it is much like Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I have observed a greater interest in and acceptance of poets and poetry in recent decades, so in that way it is better for poets. And I find it to be wildly exciting to be a woman of indigenous lineage writing poetry, stories and essays that invariably get published. When I first went to college there were very few women and minority writers whose work was being taught. Since then, there has been an immense flowering forth of writing by women, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, gay people, and so on. When I entered into early womanhood, those such as myself were primarily represented by a shroud of silence in the literary world. Nevertheless, it can be an existence of real hardship to remain loyal to one’s writing gift and not ever waver from it. I and other writers frequently scrape along, making a little bit of money giving poetry readings and lectures or getting college teaching jobs which increasingly are at the adjunct level. Occasionally we are fortunate enough to be awarded a big fellowship or grant, such as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. There have been increasing cutbacks in the arts in America, and far too many writers find themselves in the position of desperadoes perpetually anxious about being able to pay the rent, buy food, keep an old car running, and do whatever else is necessary to keep afloat economically. I figure my seasons of struggle have taught me more about the human condition and what it is like for millions of people around our planet who have next to nothing or nothing at all. We writers need to understand what it feels like to be on one’s knees bereft and crying because of the harshness of existence and, if we are lucky, to come through a “dark night of the soul” into the light of tenderness, profound love, and renewed strength.
Susan: I am inclined to say it is much like Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I have observed a greater interest in and acceptance of poets and poetry in recent decades, so in that way it is better for poets. And I find it to be wildly exciting to be a woman of indigenous lineage writing poetry, stories and essays that invariably get published. When I first went to college there were very few women and minority writers whose work was being taught. Since then, there has been an immense flowering forth of writing by women, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, gay people, and so on. When I entered into early womanhood, those such as myself were primarily represented by a shroud of silence in the literary world. Nevertheless, it can be an existence of real hardship to remain loyal to one’s writing gift and not ever waver from it. I and other writers frequently scrape along, making a little bit of money giving poetry readings and lectures or getting college teaching jobs which increasingly are at the adjunct level. Occasionally we are fortunate enough to be awarded a big fellowship or grant, such as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. There have been increasing cutbacks in the arts in America, and far too many writers find themselves in the position of desperadoes perpetually anxious about being able to pay the rent, buy food, keep an old car running, and do whatever else is necessary to keep afloat economically. I figure my seasons of struggle have taught me more about the human condition and what it is like for millions of people around our planet who have next to nothing or nothing at all. We writers need to understand what it feels like to be on one’s knees bereft and crying because of the harshness of existence and, if we are lucky, to come through a “dark night of the soul” into the light of tenderness, profound love, and renewed strength.
Adirondacks
Teresa: What does it mean to you to be a “poet” and what do you think is the role of the poet in society?
Susan: To be a poet is my heart, my very life, Teresa. I call poetry my one constant lover. For me, the very act of writing bears kinship to Native ceremony in the sense that it brings close attention to all of existence and works to bring disparate elements into balance. What is the role of the poet? Probably something similar to that of the holy fool. The poet attempts through words to call people back to the wondrousness of life, to help others see, hear, touch, taste and smell life anew and be shaken by that “rebirth of wonder” the poet Ferlinghetti referred to. I did not enter into poetry with any thought of a role in society, especially when writing is such a solitary occupation. However, it does seem for quite a few poets that a role in society is thrust upon them. Poets generally are truth seekers who don’t wallow in clichés and stereotypes. They desire to behold what is there after “the Doors of Perception are cleansed,” and that can be annoying if not enraging to those who prefer sitting around watching Fox Spews (as I call it) and participating in their own self-brainwashing. Poets, the perennial outsiders, can make others feel exceedingly uncomfortable to the point where they even get dragged off to prison or executed. Many of us express through our language what those who are oppressed and voiceless are too afraid to speak or write. It is always gratifying when someone approaches me following a poetry reading and tells me that a poem of mine said what they always wanted to say but did not dare to do so.
Teresa: You have done a lot of traveling. How does traveling to other parts of the country or world affect you and your writing?
Susan: Traveling is yet another teacher for me, one that helps me know what is occurring in other people’s lives and in other countries. It would be irresponsible of me to stay cocooned in one place among only people I knew from my life’s beginning. More than ever, I believe it is vital not only for writers but for all humans to be citizens of the entire world, to listen to others and try to understand their cultures. Returning to your earlier question regarding the Catskills, I grew up around small town people who could be xenophobic and unaware of existence beyond their own rural radius of being. Some of that small town life I could call unique and charming, but much of it was and is tinged with a mean-spirited paranoia and distrustful ignorance.
Susan: Traveling is yet another teacher for me, one that helps me know what is occurring in other people’s lives and in other countries. It would be irresponsible of me to stay cocooned in one place among only people I knew from my life’s beginning. More than ever, I believe it is vital not only for writers but for all humans to be citizens of the entire world, to listen to others and try to understand their cultures. Returning to your earlier question regarding the Catskills, I grew up around small town people who could be xenophobic and unaware of existence beyond their own rural radius of being. Some of that small town life I could call unique and charming, but much of it was and is tinged with a mean-spirited paranoia and distrustful ignorance.
Teresa: Truth-telling and honesty are important features of your poems and certain subject matters that you write about require a lot of courage, such as Native American history bound-in with your own Native family history and the history of women and current struggles of women. Why do you feel that it is important to write about these subject matters? And how are they connected?
Susan: We have had centuries of patriarchy, genocide and gynocide. My mind becomes nearly stunned into paralysis when I try to imagine how many Native American people have been killed or had their cultures and languages obliterated. My heart can hardly stop breaking when I consider how many girls and women have been oppressed and tortured into submission. I remember all those beautiful people rendered voiceless and “wooden” when I write a poem, story or essay, or when I travel to a university to give a poetry reading. I think to myself and sometimes even say aloud, “This is for all of those millions who had no chance to speak up for themselves, to bear witness to their lives, to continue speaking and smiling.” People need to know about the real history/herstory of the world, not just that history the “conquerors” foist on schoolchildren. How can we ever have authentic civilization and sweetness of existence if we don’t tell the truth and subsequently begin healing and figuring out some better way to walk on Mother Earth. I have long perceived a profound intertwining between women and Indians, including that we have both been regarded as inferior and sub-human.
Susan: We have had centuries of patriarchy, genocide and gynocide. My mind becomes nearly stunned into paralysis when I try to imagine how many Native American people have been killed or had their cultures and languages obliterated. My heart can hardly stop breaking when I consider how many girls and women have been oppressed and tortured into submission. I remember all those beautiful people rendered voiceless and “wooden” when I write a poem, story or essay, or when I travel to a university to give a poetry reading. I think to myself and sometimes even say aloud, “This is for all of those millions who had no chance to speak up for themselves, to bear witness to their lives, to continue speaking and smiling.” People need to know about the real history/herstory of the world, not just that history the “conquerors” foist on schoolchildren. How can we ever have authentic civilization and sweetness of existence if we don’t tell the truth and subsequently begin healing and figuring out some better way to walk on Mother Earth. I have long perceived a profound intertwining between women and Indians, including that we have both been regarded as inferior and sub-human.
Teresa: “Crying for a Vision, Snowstorm” is the first poem in your recent poetry book, Hunger Moon. Can you tell us a little more about the poem and what inspired you to write it?
Susan: I placed that poem at the beginning of Hunger Moon because of those non-Indians who romanticize Native Americans and think we all look like Edward Curtis photographs and are somehow of wisdom and visions handed down from the Great Spirit. Now, I do happen to know a lot of extraordinary Indians, but when any people suffers centuries of genocide, destruction of culture and language, and relentless breakdown of tribe, clan and family, the final result reflect all that fracturing of previous existence. This is not one bit pretty, noble, or upliftingly romantic. At the time I wrote “Crying for a Vision, Snowstorm,” I was miserably poor, ostracized even by those who talked a good game, and living in a dinky second floor apartment in Binghamton, New York. On the street below me dealers were selling drugs openly, including in the driveway of the house I lived in. Every so often I heard gunshots in the middle of the night, and I hoped that bullets would not pierce through the wall where my head lay during sleep and where I held my cat close to me. I was carving a life out of that material poverty: writing books, teaching as an adjunct lecturer at Broome Community College, giving poetry readings, and working on my MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College after having already earned a B.A. and M.A. at Binghamton University. I wrote that poem because I have encountered people who accuse poets of doing nothing and Indians of doing the same, indicating that we don’t deserve to live because we fail to have sufficient “pennies from Heaven.” The crass arrogance and hubris of such assumptions never fail to shock me, and in my world people’s worth is not tied in with having an expensive car or mansion.
Susan: I placed that poem at the beginning of Hunger Moon because of those non-Indians who romanticize Native Americans and think we all look like Edward Curtis photographs and are somehow of wisdom and visions handed down from the Great Spirit. Now, I do happen to know a lot of extraordinary Indians, but when any people suffers centuries of genocide, destruction of culture and language, and relentless breakdown of tribe, clan and family, the final result reflect all that fracturing of previous existence. This is not one bit pretty, noble, or upliftingly romantic. At the time I wrote “Crying for a Vision, Snowstorm,” I was miserably poor, ostracized even by those who talked a good game, and living in a dinky second floor apartment in Binghamton, New York. On the street below me dealers were selling drugs openly, including in the driveway of the house I lived in. Every so often I heard gunshots in the middle of the night, and I hoped that bullets would not pierce through the wall where my head lay during sleep and where I held my cat close to me. I was carving a life out of that material poverty: writing books, teaching as an adjunct lecturer at Broome Community College, giving poetry readings, and working on my MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College after having already earned a B.A. and M.A. at Binghamton University. I wrote that poem because I have encountered people who accuse poets of doing nothing and Indians of doing the same, indicating that we don’t deserve to live because we fail to have sufficient “pennies from Heaven.” The crass arrogance and hubris of such assumptions never fail to shock me, and in my world people’s worth is not tied in with having an expensive car or mansion.
Crying for a Vision, Snowstorm
I suppose you want my poems to be
about dancing in feathers at powwows
or hiking up to some generic
purple majesty mountaintop out West,
fasting on long freezing nights and
crying for a vision. Here is the vision
I am crying for in my dump of a freezing
apartment in Binghamton, New York …
enough to cover rent plus cable television
so my cat and I can watch our nature shows
loud enough to block out the gunshots
on this street the city plows last.
I suppose you want my poems to be
about dancing in feathers at powwows
or hiking up to some generic
purple majesty mountaintop out West,
fasting on long freezing nights and
crying for a vision. Here is the vision
I am crying for in my dump of a freezing
apartment in Binghamton, New York …
enough to cover rent plus cable television
so my cat and I can watch our nature shows
loud enough to block out the gunshots
on this street the city plows last.
Teresa: Can you tell us about what inspired your poems, “Hunger Moon Woman,” “Joe the Chief,” “Martin Luther King, Jr. Night” and “Black Hoodie”?
Susan: “Hunger Moon Woman” is tied in with my marriage to the university professor I refer to as “my now dead ex-husband, Columbus.” Flashing back to “the personal is political” and how power structure works, certainly my marriage to a man nineteen years older than myself taught me a lot about power hierarchy sifting down into people’s private relationships. Most people have no idea what occurred inside that marriage, including how he yanked my hair so hard once I smashed into the kitchen floor and sustained a bad whiplash injury which subsequently caused other suffering both physical and emotional. I am speaking of years of pain here, until I managed to leave the marriage in 2000. I believe that most of us women who have known abuse do not wish to be viewed as victims, although the truth is women and other people are at times victims. We need to name that victimization and do something about it. “Hunger Moon Woman” is a poem of shape-shifting and self-empowerment, of a woman leaving a life of sadness, wandering out into the winter forests and fields, and finding her kinship with the Earth and the deer. “Hunger Moon” itself refers to the winter moon in which there is more hardship and more animals and people going hungry. This poem is one of re-inhabiting one’s wild doe nature and making a journey away from hungers of an emotional and spiritual kind.
“Joe the Chief” came to me after visiting Yellowstone National Park a couple of summers ago. I was so thrilled to see the bison there when the buffalo herds had been massacred in the nineteenth century as much as we indigenous people had been massacred. As with many Indians, I am thrilled at the sight of a buffalo and nearly cry whenever I see one. I had been to Yellowstone National Park one other time, in the summer of 1975, and I saw not one buffalo at that time. The entire scene with the bull buffalo among the tourist cars and then noticing that sign about the great chief of the Nez Perce, Chief Joseph, really shook me up. I wonder how many other people felt the way I did about the magnificent bull buffalo and other bison and how many simply viewed the buffalo the way they do me or other Native people … a few minutes of thrill over something not of their world. All these connections were flying back and forth inside my heart/mind, ones tying me, the Nez Perce who fought there, and the hounded bison together. Yes, I took my photographs of the buffalo, but to this day I haven’t driven on and forgotten him, any more than I shall ever forget Chief Joseph and his people. All of us have known terror. I like to think of my poem “Chief Joe” as the photograph which says “Don’t ever forget.” It is my response to those who still believe the Indian and the buffalo are vanishing.
“Martin Luther King, Jr. Night” is a winter’s night poem having to do with the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and with one of the great loves of my life. I wrote that poem on MLK’s birthday, close to midnight. I have grieved for many decades over King’s assassination, a terrible shock to people of my generation who dreamed along with Martin that one day all people would be “judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I was feeling the loss of my young Korean lover, a poet and underground hip hop artist who wanted to have children, not possible with a femme d’un certain age. It was only possible for us to have our Persian cat, Wu Wei, and of course we star-crossed lovers were fated to separate. In among all those poignant feelings, the night and the room and the city just seemed so unutterably beautiful to me enveloped in those memories involving different kinds of love. I don’t suppose I can ever explain this about some of our loneliest times, but they have a way of metamorphosing into our loveliest times. I suppose it is a bit like that Zen saying I am most fond of: “When you speak, It is silent. When you are silent, It speaks.” The Great Mystery started speaking on that Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday night and I began experiencing what might be called cosmic consciousness.
“Black Hoodie” is very much a continuation of my feelings regarding Martin Luther King, Jr. When I was a teenage girl I fiercely believed that America would have moved further away from its racism than it has. I felt so upset about George Zimmerman shooting that young black man, hardly past boyhood, especially when the dispatcher had told him to remain inside his car. Instead he left his car and went hunting. So there I was in the Oregon redwood forest on the day the verdict was supposed to be handed down on whether Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin, or not. Then one of those amazing moments happened to me, as they sometimes do (Carl Jung might have called it synchronicity). On the path my hiking companion and I were walking on I spotted what appeared to be a black torso. You can imagine how my heart started beating faster and skipping some beats! I stopped in my tracks, believing it was a dead body on the forest path. But once my eyes focused, I realized it was a black hoodie. Well, I had lost a hat back on Big Sur so I thought this was a serendipitous gift to make up for the hat. I tried on the black hoodie made in Vietnam and it felt like a soft second skin on my body. I just loved that black hoodie I pulled out of the dirt and mud. My companion and I walked the rest of the trail and after we got into the car we checked public radio to find out if the verdict had been announced. And it had: George Zimmerman had been declared innocent. I sat in the car inside the muddied hoodie, remembering the days of the Civil Rights Movement and thinking of Trayvon Martin with tears in my eyes. Right then and there I vowed that for the rest of my life the black hoodie would be something I’d wear in honor of the slain young black man. Since then there have been other verdicts of a similar kind, including the one excusing Michael Brown’s and Eric Garner’s killers. As far as I’m concerned, those shootings were lynchings 21st century style.
These four poems are ceremonial, in a manner of speaking. They seek to inhabit other people’s skins and spirits, and to transform tragedy and deep loss into something beautiful and healing. Certainly the last three are what I call honoring poems done in the spirit of Native American honoring songs.
Susan: “Hunger Moon Woman” is tied in with my marriage to the university professor I refer to as “my now dead ex-husband, Columbus.” Flashing back to “the personal is political” and how power structure works, certainly my marriage to a man nineteen years older than myself taught me a lot about power hierarchy sifting down into people’s private relationships. Most people have no idea what occurred inside that marriage, including how he yanked my hair so hard once I smashed into the kitchen floor and sustained a bad whiplash injury which subsequently caused other suffering both physical and emotional. I am speaking of years of pain here, until I managed to leave the marriage in 2000. I believe that most of us women who have known abuse do not wish to be viewed as victims, although the truth is women and other people are at times victims. We need to name that victimization and do something about it. “Hunger Moon Woman” is a poem of shape-shifting and self-empowerment, of a woman leaving a life of sadness, wandering out into the winter forests and fields, and finding her kinship with the Earth and the deer. “Hunger Moon” itself refers to the winter moon in which there is more hardship and more animals and people going hungry. This poem is one of re-inhabiting one’s wild doe nature and making a journey away from hungers of an emotional and spiritual kind.
“Joe the Chief” came to me after visiting Yellowstone National Park a couple of summers ago. I was so thrilled to see the bison there when the buffalo herds had been massacred in the nineteenth century as much as we indigenous people had been massacred. As with many Indians, I am thrilled at the sight of a buffalo and nearly cry whenever I see one. I had been to Yellowstone National Park one other time, in the summer of 1975, and I saw not one buffalo at that time. The entire scene with the bull buffalo among the tourist cars and then noticing that sign about the great chief of the Nez Perce, Chief Joseph, really shook me up. I wonder how many other people felt the way I did about the magnificent bull buffalo and other bison and how many simply viewed the buffalo the way they do me or other Native people … a few minutes of thrill over something not of their world. All these connections were flying back and forth inside my heart/mind, ones tying me, the Nez Perce who fought there, and the hounded bison together. Yes, I took my photographs of the buffalo, but to this day I haven’t driven on and forgotten him, any more than I shall ever forget Chief Joseph and his people. All of us have known terror. I like to think of my poem “Chief Joe” as the photograph which says “Don’t ever forget.” It is my response to those who still believe the Indian and the buffalo are vanishing.
“Martin Luther King, Jr. Night” is a winter’s night poem having to do with the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and with one of the great loves of my life. I wrote that poem on MLK’s birthday, close to midnight. I have grieved for many decades over King’s assassination, a terrible shock to people of my generation who dreamed along with Martin that one day all people would be “judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I was feeling the loss of my young Korean lover, a poet and underground hip hop artist who wanted to have children, not possible with a femme d’un certain age. It was only possible for us to have our Persian cat, Wu Wei, and of course we star-crossed lovers were fated to separate. In among all those poignant feelings, the night and the room and the city just seemed so unutterably beautiful to me enveloped in those memories involving different kinds of love. I don’t suppose I can ever explain this about some of our loneliest times, but they have a way of metamorphosing into our loveliest times. I suppose it is a bit like that Zen saying I am most fond of: “When you speak, It is silent. When you are silent, It speaks.” The Great Mystery started speaking on that Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday night and I began experiencing what might be called cosmic consciousness.
“Black Hoodie” is very much a continuation of my feelings regarding Martin Luther King, Jr. When I was a teenage girl I fiercely believed that America would have moved further away from its racism than it has. I felt so upset about George Zimmerman shooting that young black man, hardly past boyhood, especially when the dispatcher had told him to remain inside his car. Instead he left his car and went hunting. So there I was in the Oregon redwood forest on the day the verdict was supposed to be handed down on whether Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin, or not. Then one of those amazing moments happened to me, as they sometimes do (Carl Jung might have called it synchronicity). On the path my hiking companion and I were walking on I spotted what appeared to be a black torso. You can imagine how my heart started beating faster and skipping some beats! I stopped in my tracks, believing it was a dead body on the forest path. But once my eyes focused, I realized it was a black hoodie. Well, I had lost a hat back on Big Sur so I thought this was a serendipitous gift to make up for the hat. I tried on the black hoodie made in Vietnam and it felt like a soft second skin on my body. I just loved that black hoodie I pulled out of the dirt and mud. My companion and I walked the rest of the trail and after we got into the car we checked public radio to find out if the verdict had been announced. And it had: George Zimmerman had been declared innocent. I sat in the car inside the muddied hoodie, remembering the days of the Civil Rights Movement and thinking of Trayvon Martin with tears in my eyes. Right then and there I vowed that for the rest of my life the black hoodie would be something I’d wear in honor of the slain young black man. Since then there have been other verdicts of a similar kind, including the one excusing Michael Brown’s and Eric Garner’s killers. As far as I’m concerned, those shootings were lynchings 21st century style.
These four poems are ceremonial, in a manner of speaking. They seek to inhabit other people’s skins and spirits, and to transform tragedy and deep loss into something beautiful and healing. Certainly the last three are what I call honoring poems done in the spirit of Native American honoring songs.
Hunger Moon Woman
A woman glimpsed winter full moon
through a window of a house shared
with the man she no longer recognized.
So it happens sometimes …
one morning a person wakes up and
maybe it is that day when all the cells
in the body get replaced, or the way
a beam of light unmasks the meanness
beneath a mate’s face and suddenly
he’s a stranger, or a word slashes
the heart in such a way it will fight
no more forever for its once love.
So it became for the woman called
wife by the man she no longer knew.
She pulled on coat and boots and when
he was sleeping traipsed out into
the midnight of the Hunger Moon’s
deep snows, feet feeling for deer paths
leading to ridge far above the house.
She hopped from hole to hole
dug by deer hoofs, snow sparked to
fire opals in fluorescent moonlight …
through blue drifts leaping
from forest into blaze of crystals
fancy dancing across fiery field.
No need for flashlight …
only artificial light twinkling in
distant city like upside down sky
flooding river valley. No more house
or porch bulb that first lit her way
away from the stranger. O the deer trails
beading Mother Earth, O legs lengthening
and sprouting fur, bearing her to deer
bedded down beneath pines encircling
the holy moon meadow. She knelt
and sparkled with the other deer.
A woman glimpsed winter full moon
through a window of a house shared
with the man she no longer recognized.
So it happens sometimes …
one morning a person wakes up and
maybe it is that day when all the cells
in the body get replaced, or the way
a beam of light unmasks the meanness
beneath a mate’s face and suddenly
he’s a stranger, or a word slashes
the heart in such a way it will fight
no more forever for its once love.
So it became for the woman called
wife by the man she no longer knew.
She pulled on coat and boots and when
he was sleeping traipsed out into
the midnight of the Hunger Moon’s
deep snows, feet feeling for deer paths
leading to ridge far above the house.
She hopped from hole to hole
dug by deer hoofs, snow sparked to
fire opals in fluorescent moonlight …
through blue drifts leaping
from forest into blaze of crystals
fancy dancing across fiery field.
No need for flashlight …
only artificial light twinkling in
distant city like upside down sky
flooding river valley. No more house
or porch bulb that first lit her way
away from the stranger. O the deer trails
beading Mother Earth, O legs lengthening
and sprouting fur, bearing her to deer
bedded down beneath pines encircling
the holy moon meadow. She knelt
and sparkled with the other deer.
Joe the Chief
After we watched the bull buffalo
trot along a herd of cars in Yellowstone,
ranger trying to nudge bison defiance
into pines with white pickup and siren,
we read the sign about Chief Joseph
and other Nez Perce Indians running
like that buffalo among the tourists …
On a summer night in 1877, hundreds
of “non-treaty” Nez Perce – bands refusing
confinement on a reservation –
camped near here. They journeyed
1,170 miles in their quest for freedom.
On a summer day in 2013
we kept seeing buffalo once said
to be vanishing the way we Indians
were proclaimed to be vanishing.
One shaggy baby buffalo
I wished I could hold in my arms
the way Joseph held his newborn
when his wife, Springtime,
was wounded at Big Hole,
as if such cradling could heal
what happened by Yellowstone River …
make right the Nez Perce captured 40 miles
into Canada then forced back.
I suppose Joseph’s eyes became
like the eyes of Grandfather Buffalo
on the hot park road, wild, befuddled,
sad beyond sorrow …
that smoke dance of buffalo
making everyone’s heart stop
before they took a picture
and drove on.
After we watched the bull buffalo
trot along a herd of cars in Yellowstone,
ranger trying to nudge bison defiance
into pines with white pickup and siren,
we read the sign about Chief Joseph
and other Nez Perce Indians running
like that buffalo among the tourists …
On a summer night in 1877, hundreds
of “non-treaty” Nez Perce – bands refusing
confinement on a reservation –
camped near here. They journeyed
1,170 miles in their quest for freedom.
On a summer day in 2013
we kept seeing buffalo once said
to be vanishing the way we Indians
were proclaimed to be vanishing.
One shaggy baby buffalo
I wished I could hold in my arms
the way Joseph held his newborn
when his wife, Springtime,
was wounded at Big Hole,
as if such cradling could heal
what happened by Yellowstone River …
make right the Nez Perce captured 40 miles
into Canada then forced back.
I suppose Joseph’s eyes became
like the eyes of Grandfather Buffalo
on the hot park road, wild, befuddled,
sad beyond sorrow …
that smoke dance of buffalo
making everyone’s heart stop
before they took a picture
and drove on.
Teresa: How do you write a poem? Do you have a particular process?
Susan: The actual writing of a poem happens really fast for me, in a flash. But the process is one that occurs over time, sometimes a long time and sometimes a much briefer time. I have this image of my mind being like a kaleidoscope and it is as if the hand of the Great Mystery turns that kaleidoscope every so often and all the gem-like words of poetry fall into a pattern that shines and calls to me. That is when I am ready to write a poem. This is important … I never feel that writing is solely of an individual me but of all the world and universe. Even when I use first person “I” a poem is not only about me, something that people don’t always get. I like what Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” I am with him on containing multitudes and speaking in many voices. I also am with John Keats and what he had to say about “Negative Capability.” I prefer to let whatever it is just come to me, to be receptive and let the mystery be.
Teresa: What project(s) are you currently working on?
Susan: My biggest project now is a kind of mixed genre memoir tied in with my roving in Iceland, the British Isles, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark this past spring and summer. This book will especially have to do with my Irish/Welsh/Scottish ancestresses and their migrations leading eventually to Turtle Island and to this one little woman who happens to be a poet wishing to honor them. I am particularly intrigued by the ancient connections between the Irish and other Isles people and Eastern Woodlands Indian people. Many of the old beliefs and ways are strikingly similar. I am also working on a chapbook of poems, along with editing my Re-Matriation Chapbook Series of Indigenous Poetry and a third volume of my Native anthology, I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool) for FootHills Publishing.
Susan: My biggest project now is a kind of mixed genre memoir tied in with my roving in Iceland, the British Isles, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark this past spring and summer. This book will especially have to do with my Irish/Welsh/Scottish ancestresses and their migrations leading eventually to Turtle Island and to this one little woman who happens to be a poet wishing to honor them. I am particularly intrigued by the ancient connections between the Irish and other Isles people and Eastern Woodlands Indian people. Many of the old beliefs and ways are strikingly similar. I am also working on a chapbook of poems, along with editing my Re-Matriation Chapbook Series of Indigenous Poetry and a third volume of my Native anthology, I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool) for FootHills Publishing.
Links to Susan Deer Cloud's poetry books:
Braiding Starlight (Split Oak Press)
Car Stealer (FootHills Publishing)
The Last Ceremony (FootHills Publishing)
Fox Mountain (FootHills Publishing)
Hunger Moon (Shabda Press)
Susan Deer Cloud & Teresa Mei Chuc
at a Vietnamese Restaurant
