byA.A. Hedge Coke
Included in the anthology Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing ,
Simon Ortiz, editor, University of Arizona Press.
I enjoy reading poetry and prose with layered imagery. Some of my favorite established women writers are: Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Zora Neale Hurston, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ursula K. Le Guin, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Luci Tapahonso. There is a certain pattern in each of these writer's work that is continuous and compelling.In my own writing, I hope to work the words in such a way that the images build upon each other, in a fashion not unlike patterned cloth, or quilting. For instance, if I were concentrating on plants or flowers, I might decide to create within the words a shape which was living, growing. This might not be an actual physical shape on the page. It would probably be more a shape from the resonance, or images, within the words. I like the words to have movement and dance within them. I like the words to breathe as if they were fleshy and had life within them, to speak for themselves.
In some traditional songs tones have great significance. These tones have certain emotional and psychological properties, essential to meaning and purpose of the song itself. I learned, in speaking traditional language, repetition of words may also be used to emphasize certain things, for instance: red red may indicate a material substance is red all the way through, or it could indicate a red pure in hue. Different words may also be used to indicate different types of the same color, such as: separate words to indicate what is physically a color and what is esoterically the same color. And, in the Indian way of speaking, nouns may precede adjectives and are the reverse of what is expected and considered correct in formal English (horse red in opposition to red horse, for example).
Today when I write poetry I sometimes incorporate the Native ways of describing, even while writing in English. This enhances the work and makes the writing both comfortable and startling.
I began writing when I was young. I felt I had to write, to create. It was more of a compulsion than an intellectual choice. Writing gave me a point of focus and peace of mind. It helped me endure and survive in my life. It still does. I feel lucky, because the writing has always been cultivated, even when I was really young, when I was being shifted around from relative to relative to avoid being lost to the system, to avoid being placed somewhere there would be no blood ties.
Each time I sit down to work, I am moved somehow by the patterns in my life and in those patterns shaping my relations. The people we came from seem to me like beads strung together, patterned, woven into a whole people. These people are always with me. They are a part of me. They lend an unseen hand in anything I do. The help shape the work by what they did in their own lives. And this I must remember to do with my own life, to give back to the future generations what was given me.
All creative work feeds another. The memories I have imprinted in my mind from making bark and pine needle baskets, and from weaving fabric, are significant to my writing today. These weaving skills may produce layered imagery, a tangle of raw material shaped into something tangible, through gentle strokes of the fingers and the mind's eye. Memories of working clay into pottery gives a certain strength to the creative flow, it makes the material more concrete. It also keeps the earth close, grounding the work. Patterning also appears in hunting and growing foods, a growth and survival pattern which helps the writing develop into something accessible, sustaining, something to feed the creative spirit.
I come from a long line of storytellers, from people who appreciated language and communication, from people who enjoyed life no matter how poor, or how alone, they were. Throughout my life, no matter where we were, or what we were doing, we always knew where we belonged and what made us who we are. We always understood the effect of blood ties and cultural sensibility. We always understood the importance of the struggle to survive, to resist the affects of outside sources, to prevent them from stifling our ways and our creativity. This is the work, the legacy, the means for continuation.
© 1998 A. A. Hedge Coke
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