Linda Hogan
Linda Hogan
Linda K. Hoganis a Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence...
bricks chunks concrete falling flying heavy struck wife
We had these heavy chunks of concrete and bricks falling on us. Timbers and what-have-you, and my wife was, unfortunately, struck with flying debris,
mother knowing-everything secret
I resented my mother for guessing my innermost secrets. She was like God, everywhere at once knowing everything.
bread fats gas
We are full of bread and gas, getting fat on the outside while inside we grow thin
struggle years knowing
There is a still place, a gap between the worlds, spoken by the tribal knowings of thousands of years. In it are silent flyings that stand aside from human struggles and the designs of our own makings. At times, when we are silent enough, still enough, we take a step into such mystery, the place of spirit, and mystery, we must remember, by its very nature does not wish to be known.
land language arise
There is a language beyond human language, an elemental language, one that arises from the land itself.
dream islands stories
There is a place where the human enters dream and myth, and becomes a part of it, or maybe it is the other way around when the story grows from the body and spirit of humankind. In any case, we are a story, each of us, a bundle of stories, some as false as phantom islands but believed in nevertheless. Some might be true.
death dancing ragged
Death is dancing me ragged.
water atmosphere stories
Between earth and earth's atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never a drop more, never a drop less. This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself.
song animal stories
A spoken story is larger than one unheard, unsaid. In nearly all creation accounts, words or songs are how the world was created, the animals sung into existence.
poetry strings parades
Poetry is a string of words that parades without a permit.
spiritual past attachment
And there is also the paradox that the dominating culture imbues the Indian past with great meaning and significance; it is valued more because it is seen as part of the past. And it is the romantic past, not the present, that holds meaning and spiritual significance for so many members of the dominating culture. It has seemed so strange to me that the larger culture, with its own absence of spirit and lack of attachment for the land, respects these very things about Indian traditions, without adopting those respected ways themselves.
ocean sea giving
tears have a purpose. they are what we carry of the ocean, and perhaps we must become the sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to be transformed.