The Zen of La Llorona

by MIRANDA DEBORAH A.

• ISBN13: 9781844710638
• ISBN10: 1844710637
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

Summary

The Zen of La Llorona is a second collection of poetry by a Native American woman, and as such, it goes beyond initial concerns with personal racial identity. While still very much speaking from an indigenous point of view, The Zen of La Llorona complicates that indigenous identity with visceral explorations of gendered violence, sexual orientation and mothering in an unpredictable, chaotic world. Key to these poems are historical and current events: traumas as distant as the colonization of California's indigenous peoples and as close as the destructive forces of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do we survive destruction without becoming destroyers ourselves? How can the elements of earth, love, community and work nurture creation, and manifest hope? Utilizing the figure of "La Llorona," a mythical indigenous figure of the Americas who first murders and then mourns her children, the poems in this book seek to unravel the mysterious fascination we have with despair, and move us along with the poet to a more clarifying, centering focus on joy. Zen, the author notes, tells us "everyone loses everything," leaving us with only a decision about our attitude toward loss itself. La Llorona, on the other hand, says, "Nonsense - there's always something left to lose." What that "something" is, and how we can preserve and honor it, is at the heart of this collection of poems.

Table of Contents

Coyote Tells Why He Sings

Geode

Stone Age

Skins as Old Testament

Dancing with Dinosaurs

Driving in Oklahoma

What the Eagle Fan Says

Birch Canoe

In Chigger Heaven

Close Encounters

Wazhazhe Grandmother

Ponca War Dancers

Over by Fairfax, Leaving Tracks

Getting Across

Pure Country

Cowboys and Indians

Communing Before Supermarkets

An Eagle Nation

Dragon-watching in St Louis

That Lightning's Hard to Climb

And Don't Be Deaf to the Singing Beyond

Looking Before and After

Aunt Jewell as Powwow Princess

When Earth Brings

In the Suburbs

A Mandala of Sorts

In the Changing Light

Outside in St. Louis

What the Poet's Cottage in Tucson Said

How the Songs Come Down

Making Money

Transactions

Earth and Diamonds

Amber and Lightning

Snowflakes, Waterdrops, Time, Eternity and So On

Unzipping Angels

Christmas Shopping

Given

Liquid Crystal Thoughts

Sea-changes, Easter 1990

Law and Order

Discovery of the New World

November in Washington, D.C.History into Words

Another Sunday Morning

Parading with the Veterans of Foreign Wars

Coming of Age in the County Jail

Free White and Fifteen

Firewater

A Response to Terrorists

Hamlet and Fortinbras Exchange Pleasantries

The Biograbbers

Support your Local Police Dog

Criminals as Creators of Capital

Chimes at Midnight

The Secret Verbs

On the Planet of Blue-eyed Cats

A Song That We Still Sing

Starring America

To The Eastern Shores of Light

New York, With Reservations

On The Reservation

Over There

Advice from Euterpe

Jetliner from Angel City

Where the Muses Haunt

The Swan's Song

Pilotless Angel: Christmas, 2004

Letter to Friends on the Isle of Skye

Postcolonial Hyperbaggage

Columbus Looks Out Far, In Deep

But Still in Israel's Paths They Shine

Songs of the Wine-throated Hummingbird

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Swarm 18 months after your last breath I am still learning a language I can't translate, a distance I can't measure, a weight I can't move. I live with it, endure the glacial grind. of questions I should have asked. Some days your scent feathers through my blood like a flock of mourning doves. Some days, splintered memories migrate from my heart out into every cell of this survivor's body, sting like a million frenzied bees fleeing the broken hive.