In this week’s installment of Poetry Friday, we hear from Laura Tohe, poet laureate of the Navajo Nation. She grew up in Crystal, New Mexico, the daughter of a Code Talker, and went on to become a professor emerita of English at Arizona State University. In addition to bilingual poetry and fiction, Tohe also writes oratorios for operas. Today she talks about the evolution of her writing career and shares her poem, Japanese Garden – After a Stone and Sand Exhibit in Portland.
Laura Tohe: Everyone in my family was a storyteller. But I never realized that until I got to college because I grew up thinking only white people could be storytellers because I the schools we read books written by white American authors. Somehow I got it in my head that only white authors could write, so I had never read any work by a Native American until I got into college.
I actually didn’t start writing in Navajo language seriously until fairly recently. That’s because my clan father, Sherwin Bitsui who’s also a poet, asked me if I had any poems in Navajo language because he was curating a month-long poetry series for AmericanPoetry.org. He asked if I had anything and I said I really don’t think I do. So, I looked through my work, and there really wasn’t anything substantial that I could send him. I decided I would write something.
I had been to this Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon. And, I was looking at this exhibit because there was one rock that was fairly large and it was kind of tall, and then there were smaller rocks around it, and to me it looked like maybe a man in a cloak with animals and water behind him. I could only think maybe it was Noah, you know, who led the animals and who built this arc for the animals. Or, Saint Francis of Assisi.
I did write some notes down for this poem in English and just put it in my little notebook that I was carrying in my bag, and then when I got home I started writing it in Navajo. It has a different sense when you write it in Navajo. It seems that the words, the sensibility, the thoughts are from a different world view.
Today I’m going to read a poem that I wrote, Japanese Garden (After a stone and sand exhibit in Portland).
A man is leading the animals.
A man is leading the ones that float on water.
A man is leading the winged ones.
A man is leading the ones that swim.
Maybe he’s St. Francis,
the long-robed man who calls the animals to him now.
Maybe he’s Noah,
the one who gathered the animals
and sailed away with the, they say.
Who was there to witness their leaving?
To sing a song for their journey?
Where are they going?
their faces turned northward,
taking their songs,
taking their maps,
taking their languages.
Are they leaving with joy in their hearts?
Or is sadness eating at their star hearts?
In the wake of their leaving a small wind
stirs the empty hands of the tree branches above us.
What I will remember—
footsteps left like dinosaur tracks
pressed between Sky Woman and Mother Earth.
When they leave,
I will weep.
I will weep.
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
