By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
Have you ever had a soul connection with another being that is not a human? Whether or not you have, you will never forget the opportunity Linda Hogan gives you to do so in her evocative poem Song for the Turtles in the Gulf. I read it and my heart stopped.
I’m so moved by her taking me on an intimate journey into the undersea world inhabited by a being that you, too, will come to love and cherish that is no more. How do we wake up and experience our kinship with all other life? One way is through art.
Poems such as Song remind us of their power to shift perspectives by creating emotional connections between people and our fellow beings. At the Alliance, we feel art is as essential to sustainability as breathing air. Where there is no art, there will be no true sustainability. Here’s to Hogan’s radiant and heartbreaking gift in celebration of Women’s History Month and World Poetry Day, March 21.
Being Drawn to Indigenous Wisdom
In a world that is increasingly brutal, I find myself drawn to the wisdom of First Peoples, who have always sought a right relationship with Turtle Island, which refers to both North America and Mother Earth. I find solace in their ways of seeing and feeling.
I’ve just finished reading Restoring the Kinship Worldview about how adopting Indigenous worldviews – with their vital connection to nature – can rebalance life on earth for us all. As many Native American elders encourage, we all need to return to our true selves and be “indigenous.” And there’s a strong case to be made for supporting Indigenous people who lead the way in reversing climate change.
Lamenting Makes Space for Hope
We swim into an underwater world with Chickasaw poet, novelist and environmentalist Linda Hogan, a place of “splendor and light.” We befriend “the beautiful swimmer, the mosaic growth of shell so detailed.”
Sadly, this great mother encounters “the man from British Petroleum” responsible for her “burned and covered with red-black oil, torched and pained” shell. We share Hogan’s deep sorrow, “all I can think is that I loved your life.”
“At once a praise song for the beauty of the sea, the earth, and its animals, this song also functions as a lament: for the history erased by industrial practices; for the lack of respect and love for living breathing other-than-human lives; for plastic and the plastic containers used to hold the body of a dead sea turtle. The poem veers towards a prayer, too, begging forgiveness for being ‘thrown off true,’” as shared by On Being with Krista Tippett.
But we aren’t trapped in our sorrow. Brené Brown tells us, “Honest lament allows us to grieve what is lost while still making space for what is possible.”
Poetry Is Good Medicine
Fellow distinguished Native American writer Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the US from 2019-2022, writes about Linda Hogan’s The Book of Medicines:
Linda Hogan’s poetry has always been a medicine of sorts…These poems in particular cross over to speak for us in the shining world. They bring back words for healing, the distilled truth of all these stories that are killing us with tears and laughter.
Medicine is both good and bad, isn’t it? We take it to feel better or heal, but it also may taste terrible or have side effects. Hogan’s poem certainly qualifies as a medicament – lovely and uplifting, while at the same time serious and unpalatable.
Will We Take Our Medicine Before It’s Too Late?
I’m concerned our lack of communion with the natural world is a serious barrier to making the systemic changes needed to reverse climate change and heal our planet. But it’s deeper than that. We need to face many sorrowful, anxiety-producing and guilt-inducing truths. It’s a painful process.
Part of that process is restoring our individual and communal relationships with nature, through gratitude, humility and respect. That will give us not only the ability, but also the desire, to heal nature as we heal ourselves.
Healing a broken world is work, but it’s also joy and love and restoration.
Song for the Turtles in the Gulf
By Linda Hogan
We had been together so very long,
you willing to swim with me
just last month, myself merely small
in the ocean of splendor and light,
the reflections and distortions of us,
and now when I see the man from British Petroleum
lift you up dead from the plastic
bin of death,
he with a smile, you burned
and covered with red-black oil, torched
and pained, all I can think
is that I loved your life,
the very air you exhaled when you rose,
old great mother, the beautiful swimmer,
the mosaic growth of shell
so detailed, no part of you
simple, meaningless,
or able to be created
by any human,
only destroyed.
How can they learn
the secret importance
of your beaten heart,
the eyes of another intelligence
than ours, maybe greater,
with claws, flippers, plastron.
Forgive us for being thrown off true,
for our trespasses,
in the eddies of the water
where we first walked.
Source: poets.org
Linda Hogan currently serves as writer in residence for the Chickasaw Nation, and in 2007 she was inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. Her other honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Nature Writing, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.