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Exploding Chippewas (Triquarterly Books)

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You can feel the wind-the beat of drums-in these poems of Mark Turcotte, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. The first section of poems, The Back When Poems all begin with the same nine words:

Back when I used to be Indian
I am...

The tumbling of tenses in these nine words repeated in the thirty-three poems of this section hint at the tumbling of time-histories both ancient and recent, and the tumbling of cultures in this collection.

The poems in the second section speak to Turcotte's very personal story of traveling to Fargo, North Dakota to see to the burial of a father he hardly knew.

You can feel the ancient history of America in this collection, and hear its drum beat pass reluctantly from the poet's father to him, and from Turcotte to his own child. These poems, which explore childhood, father and motherhood, identity and race, make you think words like wind and dreams and bones and blood belonged to the Chippewa before they belonged to us, that we're borrowing them and we should take care to use them wisely. Turcotte has done well with his.