This,
Kipocihkan: Poems New & Selected, is the third Scofield volume on
my shelves, after The Gathering: Stones For the Medicine Wheel (1993)
and Louis: The Heretic Poems (2011).
The
problem I have with Kipocihkan is my own reading disability. When I
read, I say/hear the words in my head. When I am confronted with
words I cannot say/hear, I cannot read. Very frustrating. The
translations do help, but I found myself skipping the Cree words and
heading straight for the translation. Not what a poet would want from
a reader, I am sure. And I do understand the reason for including the
first, or the lost language. The politics. Identity politics. Like
they say in Ireland: "Our language. It's part of who we are."
I
especially like Scofield's erotic poems, and the way gender plays
such an insignificant role in his descriptions of revelling in sexual activity.
Possibly too eroticism is one of those shared pleasures, whereas the
anger, the alcohol, the abandonment are also known, recognized as
shared experience, yet not a place I choose to stay. I too, I the
reader, have my own blanket, and "I am in charge here."
(from "This Is My Blanket," p. 143)
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