Reviews

Effigies: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing, Pacific Rim, 2009 by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

gitli57's review

challenging reflective

3.5

I bought this mainly because it includes work by dg nanouk okpik and Brandy Nālani McDougall, two of my favorite Indigenous poets. Alas, all 29 poems by McDougall that are included here are from her collection Salt Wind, so don't buy this for the McDougall if you already have that volume. The overlap with okpik's Corpse Whale is not as complete, but there are some duplications there as well. Cathy Tagnak Rexford and Māhealani Perez-Wendt are the other two poets represented in this anthology.

My rating reflects my disappointment at not getting any poetry from McDougall that I did not already have on the shelf. Other than that, this is a fine little compilation, ably curated by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, who also edited my favorite large anthology of Indigenous poetry from the Americas, Sing!, for University of Arizona"s SunTracks Series. There are two more volumes in the Effigies series. I look forward to exploring them soon. 

jeeleongkoh's review

3.0

Effigies collects the work of four Indigenous poets, selected and introduced by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. dg nanouk okpik is an Inupiat-Inuit from Anchorage Alaska, Cathy Tagnak Rexford is Inupiaq, French/German and English from Anchorage too, Brandy Nalani McDougall, from Upcountry Maui, is of Kanaka Maoli, Chinese and Scottish ancestry, and Mahealani Perez-Wendt, from Hawaii, is of Spanish, Hawaiian and Chinese ancestry. The danger in such a book is exoticization, and it is a danger that poets and editor do not successfully overcome, in my opinion. The problem is knotty: how does one who live among "baleen row, razor clam edge, rabid willow ptarmigan plume ... white buds of plumeria, gardenia, lei, shaded grave of dried lauhala and graying niu" (from Editor's Note) write about these things without sounding exotic to readers from the American mainland? The best poems in the book treat these wonderful images as background to an unfolding human drama that readers can understand from their own lives. So in "Oblong Moon," Perez-Wendt writes,

The night Harry Pahukoa died
He was driving up from Honomanu
After laying net
He had to lay the net
Before the full moon.

The poem also succeeds in reaching out to the reader because it does not assume that its reader will understand the timing of laying a net. It explains without condescension or servility. The opening is also a skilful exercise of suspense.

kawai's review

3.0

I'm not the best poetry reader; I still have a lot to learn about how to approach different types of poems, how to read between the lines, ask the right questions about the poet's intentions, etc. Part of me thinks that shouldn't be my job--i.e. "good" poetry shouldn't require me to learn a lot of things just to figure out whether I like it or not--but most of me realizes that's laziness on my part, and the reality is that I have to do more work with most poetry I read.

Having said all of that, this is an anthology, so the reader is dealing with varied voices and subjects, which makes the work of deciding some sort of arbitrary value to the work that much harder. Suffice it to say that many of the poems resonated with me, whether dealing in narrative style with Hawai'i or offering symbolic imagery of native Alaska.

One to return to down the line, to see what I else I can learn.