For solid understanding of some significant parts of poem, it’s important to have background of the history because it reflects all the complexity and uncertainty of the past. History has been distorted, biased and opinionated since the dawn of time. It’s a solid thing, impossible to change and even more impossible to recreate. However, history has been interpreted during the time, and what we know about the past has been changed many times in even the most recent years due to new discoveries and new ideas on writing histories events. History has become less and less glossed over and started to become more truthful to the events that have actually taken place in the past. Poetry and history are much alike in these facts. Authors have become much more truthful and guileless in their words and portrayals of their lives and their points of view on any aspect of any subject. People have started to write about and make public true events that have happened in their lives and been agonizing to get through. Though there are many poems that touch my heart on a certain level, there are two that I have read recently that touch on a piece of my mind. Reliving history through memories, Deborah Miranda in “Indian Cartography” and Wendy Rose in “Itch Like Crazy: Resistance” are based on the destruction on native culture. Rose’s poem is more about standing up against those who try to destroy the culture; whereas Mirada’s poem is more about the loss and mourning it.
The poem by Deborah Miranda, “Indian Cartography” is based solely on a metaphor set in the very beginning of the poem, “My father opens a map of California - /traces mountain ranges, rivers, county borders/like family bloodlines.” She begins by telling us that her father is telling her stories of his memories of his land, people, and the significant places where significant events took place. The most significant event that he remembers is the day when they, who we can only assume is the white people who had come to “civilize” Indian tribes and “share” their lands, flooded a valley after trying to buy the Indians out of their land. Many people died that day, and Deborah’s father relives this in his memories every night. The memories, it seems, have pushed him to heavy drinking, which leads him into troubled sleep where he tries to make sense of the events. Deborah states “In my father’s dreams / after the solace of a six-pack, / he follows a longing, a deepness” which shows us that he is drinking to get away from the pain of memories of unjust events that each time making the reader feel more sorry for this man who must relive the horrible things that have happened in his past every single night.
Throughout the rest of the “Indian Cartography”, the metaphor is emphasized as the author continues to speak of landmarks and a specific dam that was set in place by the government that drowned a valley that her father used to call home. This is also emphasized by her discussing the salmon that used to spawn in the river that was shut off by the dam, and how they died and suffered from the dam’s placement. This also seems to be a metaphor, for those who suffered and died and moved away from their homeland simply because people messed with the natural order of the land and everything was changed. This poem is very strong in metaphors and imagery as well. Lines such as “he learned to swim the hard way, /and days he walked across the silver scales/swollen bellies of salmon coming back” show the authors pain from the flooding of the valley and loss of the river her father grew up with. “The government paid those Indians to move away. /he says: I don’t know where they went.” Just like the salmon, they left, were forced to leave their homeland, and no one really knows what happened to them after they realized their homeland was gone.
Therefore, the theme of the “Indian Cartography” is very much about the pain and suffering native Californian Indians have suffered. This is shown in the tone the author sets with such morbid images such as “and mouths still opening, closing/on the stories of our home.” Miranda’s father has given up the old ways because of what happened when he was little, and it seems as though she is saying that the past is giving up on the future, closing their mouths as time goes on letting the traditions die out in the hopes of an easier, less bloody future for the ancestors living counterparts. In other words, her father’s might realize that although the physical land has been disrupted and his people have been exterminated, the stories, memories and history of his people continue to thrive through the mouths of the few that remain.
“Itch Like Crazy: Resistance” by Wendy Rose is a poem with many metaphors and visual aspects to it. The setting of the character, the author, is in her office listening to a conversation being held outside her door. Explaining that “This is one of those days / when I can see Columbus / in the eyes of nearly everyone” as the introduction to her thoughts, Wendy Rose lets the reader know that she can see defeat in the eyes of those around her. Columbus was the man who brought people who tortured, killed, and suppressed many of the Indian tribes that had been coexisting fairly well for so long. Columbus, therefore, is a symbol of fear, loathing, and defeat. The defeat being spoken of is that of the Indian people still left on reservations and the choice that is made each day to give up the traditional tribal lifestyle and play into the stereotyped version of Indian life the world has grown accustomed to seeing or to keep the traditions alive, even if that means being worse off monetarily for it. Keeping traditions alive is spoken about when Rose states “Ghosts so old / they weep for release,” she then goes on to talk about specific places with their traditional names, which shows the true lifestyles of old and local Indians.
Moreover, “Itch like Crazy: Resistance” is written with the perspective of a descendant of a native Californian Indian. This poem is full of wonderful imagery that seems to hide anger and frustration the author has towards the injustices done to her ancestors. In lines such as “The voices beyond my office door/speak of surveys and destruction, /selling the natives/to live among strangers,” have the connotation of negativity, just from the words used and the context in which they are used. Saying that one is “selling” a person, and the “destruction” being discussed is the perfect example of that hidden anger. The author goes on to write about defiance and wanting to stand together against those who bring the “destruction.” When she writes “The terror crouches there/in the canyon of my hands, /the pink opening rosebud mouths/of newborns or the helplessness/of the primal song.” It seems as though she is using the wonderful imagery of rosebuds in her hands to mask the anger expressed in the “terror” and “helplessness of the primal song.” She obviously knows something about the native culture to be able to speak of how pointless it would be to follow a traditional “primal song” or ceremony to fight the “terror” she speaks of.
Later in “Itch like Crazy: Resistance,” the author writes of resistance against those who are trying to destroy the culture she seems to come from. “Now I dance the mission revolts again, /let the ambush blossom in my heart, /claim my victory with their own language, /know the strength of spine tied to spine,” Again, the author uses imagery to express the actions taken against the “terror” and “destruction” that threatens the “primal song” and natives. I really liked how she uses “their-own language” against those who threaten her heritage. The mockery helps set the tone of the poem, helps emphasize the anger she feels and expresses. The theme of this poem is the natives resisting change and destruction of their life styles, even though alterations have to be made in order to survive at all, such as the usage of “their own language” even though they show strength together as one as “spine tied to spine.”
Though the text and tone of both of these poems is so different, the overall message is much the same. Both of these poems are about the personal histories of natives and the suffering they have gone through. Both poems speak of bravery, but bravery and defeat go hand in hand. Both poems speak of tradition and the past events that have affected the lives of their people today. Both poems speak of the pain and heartache that never seems to heal. However, as much as either poem sings of sorrow, each has an undercurrent of hope; each is being written in such a way that is pointing people in the direction of gaining their voices back and being able to fight the battle that was previously lost. Fighting in the battle will give those in the future the chance that the present Native Americans have not had for many years. They are giving their future family the ability to live in peace the way they choose with the traditions they value, standing alone in their rightful pride in what they have accomplished for their freedom. Both authors used imagery and have similarly sad tones, but Wendy Rose’s poem seems to be more angry than sad. That’s why the theme of Rose’s poem is about anger and defiance, but the theme of Miranda’s poem is the forced loss of native homeland. Miranda’s poem is more morbid and depressing as well. Both authors derive their passion and expressions from personal histories of either immediate family or of relatives they seem to be close to in heritage.
In conclusion, both poems are very powerful and really impact those who read them by phrasing things in certain and unusual ways, authors convey more meaning and make the reader think and analyze the text more closely. The way authors skew their normal sentences into broken thoughts can turn a person’s opinion of the meaning of that which the author is meaning to convey. This means that in many poems, each and every word can potentially be the most important word in the whole text.
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