Comprised of [chapters] 9-11 (The Blue Ferns [includes Grandma's Story: Fishing the Dark Side of the Lake,] The Visitor, and Hunger [includes Nanabozho and Muskrat Make An Earth)
Originally published as "Dear John Wayne" in That's What She Said: A Collection of Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Native American Women, (Edited by Rayna Green. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984).
Excellence Has Always Made Me Fill with Fright When It Is Demanded by Other People, But Fills Me with Pleasure When I am Left to Practice It Alone [essay]
Part of "On Excellence," a collection of essays by nine writers.
According to the Fall 1978 edition of The Louisville Review, (which published "Mary Kroger Poems;" "To Otto in Forgetfulness;" "My Name Repeated on the Lips of the Dead;" "That Pull from the Left;" "Here’s a Good Word for Step-and-a-Half Waleski"), the "poems about Mary Kroger represent one of several voices in a longer work entitled Hovenger."
Erdrich never published a poetry collection with that title, but the above mentioned poems were published in "The Butcher's Wife" (part 4) of Jacklight: Poems.
Includes: "The Woods," "The Levelers," "Train," "Captivity," "Chahinkapa Zoo," "The King of Owls," "Painting of a White Gate and Sky," and "Night Sky."
Originally published as "" in That's What She Said: A Collection of Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Native American Women, (Edited by Rayna Green. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984).
Includes: "I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move," "The Strange People," "The Lefavor Girls," "Three Sisters," "Whooping Cranes," "Old Man Potchikoo," "Windigo," "The Red Sleep of Beasts," and "Turtle Mountain Reservation."
See “Excellence Has Always Made Me Fill with Fright When It Is Demanded by Other People, But Fills Me with Pleasure When I am Left to Practice It Alone.”
On the Road ... with the Kids: Cruising Canada with Four Children [essay]
P. Jane Hafen believes this poems refers to the Cristo destruyendo la Cruz painting by artist Jose Orozco (1883-1949).
Teresa Cid in The Insular Dream: Obsession and Resistance, also notes that Jose Clemente Orozco's fresco cycle "The Epic of American Civilization" was painted in the library of Dartmouth College - Erdrich's undergraduate university.(345)
Includes: "A Love Medicine," "Family Reunion," "Indian Boarding School: The Runaways," "Dear John Wayne," "Rugaroo," "Francince's Room," "The Lady in the Pink Mustang," nad "Walking in the Breakdown Lane."
P. Jane Hafen, in her article in Great Plains Quarterly, comments that the Pembina hills mentioned in the poem include the formation for which the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation is named.(151)
Chapters 9-11 (The Blue Ferns [includes Grandma's Story: Fishing the Dark Side of the Lake,] The Visitor, and Hunger [includes Nanabozho and Muskrat Make An Earth.) from Birchbark House
Modified: January 25, 2008,