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<i>A Scar Upon Our Voice</i> (review)

2008; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ail.0.0022

1548-9590

Molly McGlennen,

Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights

Reviewed by: A Scar Upon Our Voice Molly McGlennen (bio) Robin Coffee . A Scar Upon Our Voice. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2005. 112 pp. I have to admit that I am very conflicted writing this review. Perhaps this is because of the numerous contradictory issues that [End Page 119] Native writers seem to be confronted with on a regular basis. The politics of identity, tribal sovereignty, and decolonization are always considerations despite the desire to just create. The first thing I did when I received A Scar Upon Our Voice, embarrassingly to admit, was to find out who the author is, who the sponsor of the poetry series "Mary Burritt Christiansen" is, and who the series editor V. B. Price is. I had never heard of any of them. Right away I felt torn. I was excited to read and assess a new (to me, at least) Cherokee/ Creek/Yankton poet, but I was skeptical of the series editor's comments in the forward when he ends, This unique and important book will have, I think, a wide and devoted audience all across Indian Country and beyond for many years because it gives voice to not only the secret pain of Native Americans, but of all people oppressed or swept aside by greed, malice, and power madness of others. (xiii) Did he just lump indigenous Americans into a giant, stereotypical heap of "oppressed people" concealing "secret pain"? Do Native people have the responsibility to speak on behalf of every marginalized person? Will this book only speak to other Native Americans? Well, I thought, maybe Coffee's poetry will set this guy straight. But let me start at the beginning. Coffee's collection takes the reader on a journey to healing, a metaphor that recurs often throughout all six sections aligned in chronological order starting in 1990 to 2003. Seeing himself as a "warrior poet," Coffee perceives his words as the ultimate weapon against hopelessness, despair, and self-hate. In his preface he highlights this "underlying struggle to be free" when he says, "You can take from me what you will but you cannot touch the words of my heart" (xvi). At this point the reader is ready for some rich and reverberating poems. Instead, I hesitate to argue, the reader is pulled along unable to feel who the speaker is in many of the next ninety-five poems, unable to identify with the voice of the poetry because the language of the poems remains so distant. While I find myself reinvesting interest because of sparse gems lodged in the middle of poems (for [End Page 120] example, in "Sacrifice of Our Silence," when Coffee says "Put salt on paper / To quiet my hunger" [67]); while I can understand his "journey to heal" is a personal one (for example, in his introduction to "The Eagle and the Cross" section, when he says "It is only when I go into the very depths of the night and shed all my layers that my words are meaningful to me in the daylight" [75]); and while I warmly appreciate the author's gesture to offer these poems up as an act of kindness to others in need of solace, I cannot trust the voice enough to believe in the healing because few poems made me see something or feel something in a new way. The best poetry works, I believe, because it surprises or because it articulates a common feeling in a way one has never heard or seen before. The more uniquely detailed an image is, the more universal and connective the thought becomes. And that's where the poem lures the reader in, where the experience is shared, and where the learning takes place. That's when poetry can make things change, can allow for healing, can tell the stories. Rather than working and probing language to excavate refreshing images or innovative ideas, Coffee too often relies on abstractions ("There is a sacred echoing / In my blood" [63] from "Searching") and clichés ("You are distant / Like / A treasured memory" [48] from "Dream #2"). As I write this I am still hesitant. Here's a Native poet penning nearly one...