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Whereas
The astonishing, powerful debut by the winner of a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award
WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics.
—from “WHEREAS Statements�
WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,� she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.� This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.
WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics.
—from “WHEREAS Statements�
WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,� she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.� This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.
107 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2017
263 people are currently reading
7,881 people want to read
About the author
Layli Long Soldier
16Ìýbooks188ÌýfollowersLayli Long Soldier is the author of WHERREAS, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 554 reviews
April 18, 2017
Before I read these poems for the first time, I listened to an interview with Layli Long Solder on the , which helped provide some context for the poems. Krista Tippett doesn't always get it right, but her questions were often good places to start the discussion.
Layli Long Soldier does not want to be seen as a representative voice, which should be understandable, but if you read reviews of this collection you will see how many people get it wrong. The poems reflect her own experience as a daughter, mother, student, American, and Lakota. She plays with form and sometimes the sentences or fragments in her poems seem to be out of order, so these poems often require more than one read, deeper attention, and an understanding of historical events.
You may read or listen to the poet readingon the On Being site. ('38' being a poem to and for the 38 Dakota men who were hanged the same week Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.)
(I read this partly for my Borders 2017 project, which includes indigenous groups, and partly for National Poetry Month 2017.)
Layli Long Soldier does not want to be seen as a representative voice, which should be understandable, but if you read reviews of this collection you will see how many people get it wrong. The poems reflect her own experience as a daughter, mother, student, American, and Lakota. She plays with form and sometimes the sentences or fragments in her poems seem to be out of order, so these poems often require more than one read, deeper attention, and an understanding of historical events.
You may read or listen to the poet readingon the On Being site. ('38' being a poem to and for the 38 Dakota men who were hanged the same week Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.)
(I read this partly for my Borders 2017 project, which includes indigenous groups, and partly for National Poetry Month 2017.)
October 4, 2022
While performance seems to suit the strengths of most modern poets� works, Layli Long Soldier’s poetry is harder to separate from the page—which doesn’t mean that it rests there comfortably. Quite the contrary. Midway through WHEREAS (2017), her debut collection and a National Book Award finalist, the speaker states, “I will compose each sentence with care, by minding what the rules of writing dictate.� The declaration is noteworthy because, up to this point in the book, as an epigraph announces, Long Soldier shows little inclination to mind the rules:
The vow to compose sentences with care comes from �38,� a five-page poem that acts as a fulcrum between the shorter poems in the book’s first section and the longer “Whereas Statements� of the book’s second and final section. �38� is an account of the largest “legal� execution in U.S. history: 38 Sioux prisoners hanged, with President Abraham Lincoln’s approval, following the 1862 Sioux Uprising. The poem builds force with stark, declarative sentences, each standing as a stanza or paragraph on its own.
Long Soldier’s fitful, yearning relationship to the language of her father and older relatives—her palpable “ache of being language poor� when it comes to Lakota—embodies that sense of inadequacy, of constantly reaching and failing to connect or express. “I climb the backs of languages,� she writes, “ride them into exhaustion—maybe I pull the reins when I mean go.� Because even with Long Soldier’s rich command of it, English is a fraught instrument for exploring the dark legacies of the U.S. and the Sioux’s shared history, which Long Soldier, as a dual citizen, is heir to. Her visual artistry at work, she avails herself of the spatial elements of text—ellipses, disjunction, concrete poetry, blank space—to convey uncertainty and instability. This grasping at the elusiveness of sense-making can be thrilling, but it demands that the reader weather discomfort, abstraction, and incompleteness—and not flinch from asking, with Long Soldier, about the whole endeavor: Is poetry up to the task?
For Long Soldier, language and the body are not really separable. Apology is at the heart of the book, and physical gesture is at the heart of apology. As she tells us, “In many Native languages, there is no word for ‘apologize.� The same goes for ‘sorry,’ � yet there are ways to admit error and make amends. The title, WHEREAS, comes from the careful, official language of a federal apology to American Indians—a series of toothless “whereas� clauses in a Senate resolution that was later cut to half a page and tucked into a defense appropriations bill, signed by President Barack Obama one December weekend in 2009, with no announcement and no tribal representatives present. The U.S. government’s apology to American Indians is almost the definition of an empty gesture.
Long Soldier sets this in contrast to a quiet moment with her estranged father over breakfast in her kitchen. A little sound escapes him, and then: “He pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes. He wiped.� What seems at first to the speaker like a sneeze is an almost-silent sob—a prelude to words of remorse for decades of absence and inattention. “WHEREAS when offered an apology,� Long Soldier writes:
This poetry collection will put off many people. It is not easy to get into, since Long Soldier demands your full attention. You cannot sleep on her words, you have to be on guard, give her your all. The way she plays so masterfully with language made my little linguistic heart full to bursting. Sure, some of the poems are more on the experimental side and it's hard to really understand them if you're not in Long Soldier's shoes, but she guides you along with her own expertise, offers you a helping hand in understanding where she is coming from, explains why she writes in that particular way.
The treatment of Native communities by the US government and US citizens is appalling. Their ignorance is infuriating. Their audacity is disgusting. I am incredibly grateful that a poetry collection like WHEREAS exists, in which a woman gives voice to her people (and people who have suffered comparable atrocities) and demands better from a government / a country / a people who have forcibly taken a land that rightfully wasn't theirs and can't seem to own up to it ... even centuries later.
NowThe language of WHEREAS enacts the struggle of its project: the sheer weight of representing an “I� that is both a self and a part of a highly diverse collective—American Indians—whose identity has largely been imposed from without. For Long Soldier, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux tribe and a visual artist who has taught at Diné College, in the Navajo Nation, syntax itself strains and cracks under the burden.
make room in the mouth
for grassesgrassesgrasses
The vow to compose sentences with care comes from �38,� a five-page poem that acts as a fulcrum between the shorter poems in the book’s first section and the longer “Whereas Statements� of the book’s second and final section. �38� is an account of the largest “legal� execution in U.S. history: 38 Sioux prisoners hanged, with President Abraham Lincoln’s approval, following the 1862 Sioux Uprising. The poem builds force with stark, declarative sentences, each standing as a stanza or paragraph on its own.
The hanging took place on December 26, 1862—the day after Christmas.The Sioux fought because they were starving: They hadn’t received the payments agreed to in treaties with the U.S. government, they had lost their hunting grounds, and local traders refused to extend them credit to buy food. One of the traders was supposed to have said, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass.� After a raid by Sioux warriors, this trader’s body was found with his mouth stuffed with grass. Some might call this poetic justice. Long Soldier goes further:
This was the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
In the preceding sentence, I italicize “same week� for emphasis.
I am inclined to call this act by the Dakota warriors a poem.Then she reconsiders: After all, the trader’s words initiate the poem, “click the gears of the poem into place.� It’s telling that even in the most straightforward portion of the book, Long Soldier deploys language to mark its own limits, to probe its utility, to take its measure against concrete and tangible actions.
There’s irony in their poem.
There was no text.
“Real� poems do not “really� require words.
Long Soldier’s fitful, yearning relationship to the language of her father and older relatives—her palpable “ache of being language poor� when it comes to Lakota—embodies that sense of inadequacy, of constantly reaching and failing to connect or express. “I climb the backs of languages,� she writes, “ride them into exhaustion—maybe I pull the reins when I mean go.� Because even with Long Soldier’s rich command of it, English is a fraught instrument for exploring the dark legacies of the U.S. and the Sioux’s shared history, which Long Soldier, as a dual citizen, is heir to. Her visual artistry at work, she avails herself of the spatial elements of text—ellipses, disjunction, concrete poetry, blank space—to convey uncertainty and instability. This grasping at the elusiveness of sense-making can be thrilling, but it demands that the reader weather discomfort, abstraction, and incompleteness—and not flinch from asking, with Long Soldier, about the whole endeavor: Is poetry up to the task?
For Long Soldier, language and the body are not really separable. Apology is at the heart of the book, and physical gesture is at the heart of apology. As she tells us, “In many Native languages, there is no word for ‘apologize.� The same goes for ‘sorry,’ � yet there are ways to admit error and make amends. The title, WHEREAS, comes from the careful, official language of a federal apology to American Indians—a series of toothless “whereas� clauses in a Senate resolution that was later cut to half a page and tucked into a defense appropriations bill, signed by President Barack Obama one December weekend in 2009, with no announcement and no tribal representatives present. The U.S. government’s apology to American Indians is almost the definition of an empty gesture.
Long Soldier sets this in contrast to a quiet moment with her estranged father over breakfast in her kitchen. A little sound escapes him, and then: “He pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes. He wiped.� What seems at first to the speaker like a sneeze is an almost-silent sob—a prelude to words of remorse for decades of absence and inattention. “WHEREAS when offered an apology,� Long Soldier writes:
I watch each movement the shouldersA nation cannot pinch its fingers to the bridge of its nose, but there are ways of giving flesh to language. Long Soldier’s lyric “I,� at once fractured and centered within its fissures, attempts a poetry that can bear grief and make something new—just as the poet wishes that her young daughter, learning Lakota and Navajo and beginning to appreciate the fragments that make up her identity, may someday come to understand “wholeness for / what it is, not for what it’s not, all of it / the pieces;�
high or folding, tilt of the head both eyes down or straight through
me, I listen for cracks in knuckles or in the word choice, what is it
that I want? To feel and mind you I feel from the senses—I read
each muscle, I ask the strength of the gesture to move like a poem.
This poetry collection will put off many people. It is not easy to get into, since Long Soldier demands your full attention. You cannot sleep on her words, you have to be on guard, give her your all. The way she plays so masterfully with language made my little linguistic heart full to bursting. Sure, some of the poems are more on the experimental side and it's hard to really understand them if you're not in Long Soldier's shoes, but she guides you along with her own expertise, offers you a helping hand in understanding where she is coming from, explains why she writes in that particular way.
The treatment of Native communities by the US government and US citizens is appalling. Their ignorance is infuriating. Their audacity is disgusting. I am incredibly grateful that a poetry collection like WHEREAS exists, in which a woman gives voice to her people (and people who have suffered comparable atrocities) and demands better from a government / a country / a people who have forcibly taken a land that rightfully wasn't theirs and can't seem to own up to it ... even centuries later.
January 31, 2018
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These poems are memorable and moving, but most of all they're important. Being Native American is existing in a place that has massacred and stolen from your ancestors and now expects you to be appreciative for surviving. This poetry explores how hard it is to gain understanding from a government that downplays it's transgressions while apologizing. This author plays with language throughout her poetry, and used formatting to add depth to her poems. Most public schoolsÌý do not explain who Native Americans are in history, leaving most people to stumble upon the horrors that occurred against them on their own.
The ideals that America are modeled on do not ring true when looking at history. This book of poems explores how the author learns to express her identity and hold on to her culture. A large portion of the poems are in response to the apology that Obama signed in 2010. The poems point out the inadequacy and insulting nature of how the apology was done. The lyrical poems help shed light on the reality of Native American reservations. The truth and emotions of what she shares is essential reading. I would recommend this book to all readers who want to learn more about the history of the people who survived the creation of the United States.
These poems are memorable and moving, but most of all they're important. Being Native American is existing in a place that has massacred and stolen from your ancestors and now expects you to be appreciative for surviving. This poetry explores how hard it is to gain understanding from a government that downplays it's transgressions while apologizing. This author plays with language throughout her poetry, and used formatting to add depth to her poems. Most public schoolsÌý do not explain who Native Americans are in history, leaving most people to stumble upon the horrors that occurred against them on their own.
From "38"
The Dakota 38 refers to thirty-eight Dakota men who were executed by hanging, under
orders from President Abraham Lincoln.Ìý
To date, this is the largest “legalâ€� mass execution in US history.Ìý
The hanging took place on December 26, 1862—the day after Christmas.Ìý
This was the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
The ideals that America are modeled on do not ring true when looking at history. This book of poems explores how the author learns to express her identity and hold on to her culture. A large portion of the poems are in response to the apology that Obama signed in 2010. The poems point out the inadequacy and insulting nature of how the apology was done. The lyrical poems help shed light on the reality of Native American reservations. The truth and emotions of what she shares is essential reading. I would recommend this book to all readers who want to learn more about the history of the people who survived the creation of the United States.
November 26, 2019
Everything is in the language we use.
This felt like two totally different collections in one, which makes it a little tough to analyze and review.
The title of the book is a reference to the Native American Apology Resolution, a formal (though neutered) admission of wrongs by the U.S. government against indigenous peoples which was signed by President Obama in December 2009 and which features that word, whereas, 20 times. The second half of Whereas is an extended poetic dissection of this "apology," utilizing a variety of modes and techniques to call into question the document's obfuscating language (the term genocide is nimbly avoided throughout the original statement), its hollow precedents, and its utter lack of accompanying action or impact. I appreciated the creativity here, and could feel Long Soldier's carefully-articulated but nonetheless searing rage.
By contrast, the collection's first half ("These Being the Concerns") is more directly personal in its themes, but also more abstract in its style and academic in its tone. There are a handful of poems about the act of poem-writing itself, and several others which pull apart or recontextualize passages and quotes from other sources. Like I said, it's all very academic, and I confess most of it went over my head. If I hadn't been encouraged by some other GR reviews to stick it out, I'd have probably left the book unfinished.
But that would've been a shame, because along with the (better, in my opinion) "Whereas" section, I would also have missed what I think is the collection's best standalone poem, the final piece of part one and the thematic transition to part two. Entitled "38," this poem examines the events surrounding the largest "legal" (Long Soldier's quotes, fully echoed by me) execution in U.S. history: the mass hanging of 38 Lakota men the day after Christmas of 1862, by order of Abraham Lincoln himself. Stirred to violence by the continual theft of their rightful land and the impossibility of feeding themselves with their meager territorial resources, these men were actually sentenced to die, as Long Soldier emphasizes, "the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation."
This poem is the most formally straightforward—I don't want to say "traditional"—of the collection, a fact which Long Soldier herself flags up in what doubles as a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the legal subject matter: "Here," she assures us, "the sentence will be respected. // I will compose each sentence with care, by minding what the rules of writing dictate." But by the end of "38" the "rules of writing" have begun to lose their hold again, buckling under the momentousness of the atrocity being described. It's a really masterful piece, heartbreaking and defiant, and even if you don't read Whereas straight through you really should at least.
This felt like two totally different collections in one, which makes it a little tough to analyze and review.
The title of the book is a reference to the Native American Apology Resolution, a formal (though neutered) admission of wrongs by the U.S. government against indigenous peoples which was signed by President Obama in December 2009 and which features that word, whereas, 20 times. The second half of Whereas is an extended poetic dissection of this "apology," utilizing a variety of modes and techniques to call into question the document's obfuscating language (the term genocide is nimbly avoided throughout the original statement), its hollow precedents, and its utter lack of accompanying action or impact. I appreciated the creativity here, and could feel Long Soldier's carefully-articulated but nonetheless searing rage.
By contrast, the collection's first half ("These Being the Concerns") is more directly personal in its themes, but also more abstract in its style and academic in its tone. There are a handful of poems about the act of poem-writing itself, and several others which pull apart or recontextualize passages and quotes from other sources. Like I said, it's all very academic, and I confess most of it went over my head. If I hadn't been encouraged by some other GR reviews to stick it out, I'd have probably left the book unfinished.
But that would've been a shame, because along with the (better, in my opinion) "Whereas" section, I would also have missed what I think is the collection's best standalone poem, the final piece of part one and the thematic transition to part two. Entitled "38," this poem examines the events surrounding the largest "legal" (Long Soldier's quotes, fully echoed by me) execution in U.S. history: the mass hanging of 38 Lakota men the day after Christmas of 1862, by order of Abraham Lincoln himself. Stirred to violence by the continual theft of their rightful land and the impossibility of feeding themselves with their meager territorial resources, these men were actually sentenced to die, as Long Soldier emphasizes, "the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation."
This poem is the most formally straightforward—I don't want to say "traditional"—of the collection, a fact which Long Soldier herself flags up in what doubles as a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the legal subject matter: "Here," she assures us, "the sentence will be respected. // I will compose each sentence with care, by minding what the rules of writing dictate." But by the end of "38" the "rules of writing" have begun to lose their hold again, buckling under the momentousness of the atrocity being described. It's a really masterful piece, heartbreaking and defiant, and even if you don't read Whereas straight through you really should at least.
Read
August 19, 2018Layli Long Soldier is a citizen of the United States and of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Her collection "Whereas" won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
In the first part of her collection, Long Soldier talks about her identity and how she came to re-assess it when she became a mother - as she wants to teach her daughter what it means to be a Lakota, she contemplates what it means to her, what she herself knows about her roots. The last poem of this first part talks about the “largest ‘legal� mass execution� in United States history: President Lincoln ordered the hanging of 38 Dakota men - they were hanged one day after Christmas, the same week Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Thus starts the second part, in which Long Soldier comments on the Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans, signed by President Obama in 2009 - the resolution did not contribute to the improvement of the current situation of Native Americans, on the contrary: Funding is being cut, although "the root of reparation is repair".
Long Soldier plays with language and form, applying different poetic ideas and switching between formats. As a non-native speaker, I found some poems to be very challenging, but I enjoyed the variety of form and how the author combines different ideas and moods.
Highly recommended.
(What I found interesting (as I used to live in Minnesota): Long Soldier is published by Graywolf Press, a nonprofit publisher set in Minneapolis, a city built on land that was originally owned by the Dakota people (both the Dakota and the Lakota belonged to the Great Sioux Nation).)
In the first part of her collection, Long Soldier talks about her identity and how she came to re-assess it when she became a mother - as she wants to teach her daughter what it means to be a Lakota, she contemplates what it means to her, what she herself knows about her roots. The last poem of this first part talks about the “largest ‘legal� mass execution� in United States history: President Lincoln ordered the hanging of 38 Dakota men - they were hanged one day after Christmas, the same week Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Thus starts the second part, in which Long Soldier comments on the Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans, signed by President Obama in 2009 - the resolution did not contribute to the improvement of the current situation of Native Americans, on the contrary: Funding is being cut, although "the root of reparation is repair".
Long Soldier plays with language and form, applying different poetic ideas and switching between formats. As a non-native speaker, I found some poems to be very challenging, but I enjoyed the variety of form and how the author combines different ideas and moods.
Highly recommended.
(What I found interesting (as I used to live in Minnesota): Long Soldier is published by Graywolf Press, a nonprofit publisher set in Minneapolis, a city built on land that was originally owned by the Dakota people (both the Dakota and the Lakota belonged to the Great Sioux Nation).)
November 5, 2017
The first section of the collection plays with language and form. The second section is more grounded and is a response to the formal apology given by congress to the native peoples in 2009. Here again the author plays with language to demonstrate the emptiness of the apology. These poems are complex and working at a different level than many others I’ve read. A great, important collection.
June 18, 2017
(4.5 stars, rounded up for it's rawness)
I'll admit I don't know a lot about poetry, but I thought this book was fantastic. It made me FEEL so much. It's so sad and beautiful and so worth reading.
I'll admit I don't know a lot about poetry, but I thought this book was fantastic. It made me FEEL so much. It's so sad and beautiful and so worth reading.
Read
January 4, 2018I find it hard to rate this book. I feel it is one of those books where any rating would take away from the message and power it clearly holds.
February 25, 2022
A Beautiful Struggle
This collection is very well thought out and deeply personal.
It brings out the Native American experience in a different way. Rather than a stream of facts like most history books present. These are a combination of mostly poems but also prose that talk about struggle pain and occasionally achievement.
This is a book to be absorbed and not read quickly.
This collection is very well thought out and deeply personal.
It brings out the Native American experience in a different way. Rather than a stream of facts like most history books present. These are a combination of mostly poems but also prose that talk about struggle pain and occasionally achievement.
This is a book to be absorbed and not read quickly.
April 30, 2023
layli long soldier is a master of verse and form. wow!
June 24, 2019
This book is full of powerful and beautiful poems. The primary focus is on the Native American experience in this country, with its betrayals and prejudices but there are personal poems as well, and the two often overlap.
The poems examine the violence often contained within the language of the oppressor. The narrator also tries to reconnect with the lost or forgotten or stolen language of her ancestors. The fragments that remain guide her life.
These poems have everything to do with language, as poetry (I think) should. But the language is also connected to the social/political dimensions of these poems. There is Soldier's own language, the language of her ancestors, but also the language of the oppressors with all its lies and circumlocutions that obscure the reality of their violence. There are the lies of apologies and the broken promises of treaties and the violence to people hidden in the bland language that hides reality. Because language can be used both to reveal and to hide.
The long poem, "Whereas", deals with these lies and evasions directly. It shows how official language hides abuse and stereotyping of a complex culture. It parodies the official legal language of our country while simultaneously revealing the truth that has been twisted and hidden.
The forms of these poems are one with the truth they explore and reveal. Often experimental, they are integral to the meaning conveyed (which is conveyed by the form itself as well as the words used).
I could continue to discuss and describe this rich book but I will stop and suggest that people read and experience it for themselves. This is poetry that reaches beyond itself to cry out to everyone about a people, the use of language to oppress as well as the retaking of that language to reveal. A beautiful work.
The poems examine the violence often contained within the language of the oppressor. The narrator also tries to reconnect with the lost or forgotten or stolen language of her ancestors. The fragments that remain guide her life.
These poems have everything to do with language, as poetry (I think) should. But the language is also connected to the social/political dimensions of these poems. There is Soldier's own language, the language of her ancestors, but also the language of the oppressors with all its lies and circumlocutions that obscure the reality of their violence. There are the lies of apologies and the broken promises of treaties and the violence to people hidden in the bland language that hides reality. Because language can be used both to reveal and to hide.
The long poem, "Whereas", deals with these lies and evasions directly. It shows how official language hides abuse and stereotyping of a complex culture. It parodies the official legal language of our country while simultaneously revealing the truth that has been twisted and hidden.
The forms of these poems are one with the truth they explore and reveal. Often experimental, they are integral to the meaning conveyed (which is conveyed by the form itself as well as the words used).
I could continue to discuss and describe this rich book but I will stop and suggest that people read and experience it for themselves. This is poetry that reaches beyond itself to cry out to everyone about a people, the use of language to oppress as well as the retaking of that language to reveal. A beautiful work.
January 23, 2018
4.5 that I’m rounding up, because the poems contained within are beautiful, raw, angry, resigned, joyful, bodily real.
December 2, 2018
Layli Long Soldier's poems really make you work for your reward. Maybe it was just too much work for me, or I'm not smart enough to "get it." She likes to play with formatting and language like a modern day e.e. cummings, and many of her poems are very long and change format as they go along. I do most of my poem-reading first thing in the morning and I was not always up to the challenge. I was exhausted each time I finished one. So I can appreciate that she's brilliant and mind-blowing but I can't say that I loved the poems. Sometimes I felt like I'd just been knocked over and flattened and left for roadkill with just the breeze of the poem left blowing over my face and that's probably her goal but ... whoa.
My favorite was a very simple poem about grass.
A good example of confusing and mind-blowing is from Vaporative (this is not the complete poem, I took excerpts because it is very long).
And "Edge" which almost makes sense to me, but then ... nope, I don't get it. what thatched roofs? what edge? why don't say it? I don't know!!!
These poems speak to a lot of people, so I know it's just me. This is the type of review where I feel the need to clarify: my rating system reflects my own personal enjoyment while reading a book, and it has NOTHING to do with the quality of the book. I'm not a literature major, I am not qualified to judge a book like that, I'm just a reader.
My favorite was a very simple poem about grass.
Look
The light
grass
body
whole
wholly moves
a green hill
'til I pull
stalk 'n root
up
from
black matte
soil bed
bead s
from grass-
head s
one by
one a
part I
s p l i t
grass wires
little bulbs
silver
green
drop
lets I
sentence
to life
less light
quick dead
grass
skulls
weight
less pile
dry mound
in cupped palm
what have I
done
what
now
to do
whythisimpulse
to
shake the dead
light
why do
I so want the light
to
blink look
alive move
why
do I so want it
still
A good example of confusing and mind-blowing is from Vaporative (this is not the complete poem, I took excerpts because it is very long).
from Vaporative
However a light may come
through vaporative
glass pane or dry dermis
of hand winter bent
I follow that light
capacity that I have
cup-sized capture
snap-like seizure I
remember small
is less to forget
less to carry
tiny gears mini-
armature I gun
the spark light
I blink eye blink
at me to look
at me in
light eye
look twice
and I eye
alight
again.
When I want to write seriously I think of people like
dg for whom I wrote a long poem for whom I revised
until the poem forgot its way back troubled I let it go when
you love something let it go if it returns be a good mother
father welcome the poem open armed pull out the frying
pan grease it coat it prepare a meal
apron and kitchen sweat labor
my love my sleeves pushed
to elbows like the old days a sack
of flour and keys I push them
typography and hotcakes work
seduce a poem into believing
I can home it I can provide it
white gravy whatever the craving
poem eat and lie down full
poem rest here full don’t
lift a single l
etter.
...
promise:
if I read you
what I wrote bear
in mind I wrote it
down only
so that
I remember
example:
I have always wanted opaque to mean see-through, transparent. I’m disheartened to learn
it means the opposite. Why this instinct to assign a definition based on sound. O-PĀK�
I interpret the O: open P: soft Ā: airplane or directional flight K: cut through / translating to
that which is or allows air, airy, penetrating light, transparency. To say, You don’t fool me
for a second you’re opaque. To say, I’m partial to opaque objects I delight in luminosity. To say,
I’m interested in this painting on glass opaquely bright. I understand the need to define
as a need for stability. That I and you can be things, standing understood, among each other.
One word can be a poem believe it, one word can destroy a poem dare I. Say I am writing
to penetrate the opaque but I confuse it too often. I negotiate instinct when a word of lightful
meaning flips under / buries me in the work of blankets.
And "Edge" which almost makes sense to me, but then ... nope, I don't get it. what thatched roofs? what edge? why don't say it? I don't know!!!
Edge
This drive along the road the bend the banks behind the wheel I am called Mommy. My name is Mommy on these drives the sand and brush the end of winter we pass. You in the rearview double buckled back center my love. Your mother's mouth has a roof your mother's mouth is a church. A hut in a field lone standing. The thatched roof has caught spark what flew from walls the spark apart from rock from stable meaning. Large car steady at the curve palest light driest day a field of rocks we are not poor sealed in windows. You hum in the back. I do not know what to say how far to go the winter near dead as we drive you do not understand word for word the word for you is little. But you hear how it feels always. The music plays you swing your feet. And I see it I Mommy the edge but do not point do not say look as we pass the heads gold and blowing these dry grasses eaten in fear by man and horses.
These poems speak to a lot of people, so I know it's just me. This is the type of review where I feel the need to clarify: my rating system reflects my own personal enjoyment while reading a book, and it has NOTHING to do with the quality of the book. I'm not a literature major, I am not qualified to judge a book like that, I'm just a reader.
Read
January 1, 2023some of these poems definitely went over my head and sometimes the way Layli Long Soldier played with formatting made me feel like I was reading a list, but overall great! I loved the last section in particular, in which she explored and tore apart the US government’s “apology� to Native Americans through the language they used
March 12, 2017
I can't get over this book. It arrived on my doorstep yesterday, and already I have read through it 2 1/2 times. The 1/2 times being the poems I keep reading obsessively, like I do my favorite songs.
Now I am going to go read it again.
Now I am going to go read it again.
August 27, 2017
My lengthy review is now online! This was an amazing poetry collection:
August 30, 2020
Astonishing weaving of creativity, intelligence, anger, and grief.
August 6, 2018
A beautiful, difficult collection of poetry. I've said before that I'm not the most confident judge of poetry, and that stands (there was definitely some stuff in here I didn't "get"), but once I figured out the author's style, this work mostly flowed for me. I kept tearing my little library receipt into smaller and smaller pieces so I could bookmark my favorite phrases and poems.
The first tear, and I think my favorite, was "Wahpanica," about commas and poverty and the poverty of being denied your culture's language; she uses the word "comma" in place of actual commas, which was a cool way to pause, since few of these poems included punctuation.
I also saved several of the lines from the Whereas Statements, which centered around the United States' "apology" to indigenous tribes for like, everything that's ever been done to oppress those groups.
And regarding a man saying "Well at least there was an apology, that's all I can say" �
And one last one, because really you should just go get this book and read it yourself.
The first tear, and I think my favorite, was "Wahpanica," about commas and poverty and the poverty of being denied your culture's language; she uses the word "comma" in place of actual commas, which was a cool way to pause, since few of these poems included punctuation.
I also saved several of the lines from the Whereas Statements, which centered around the United States' "apology" to indigenous tribes for like, everything that's ever been done to oppress those groups.
WHEREAS a friend senses what she calls cultural emptiness in a poet's work and after a reading she feels bad for feeling bad for the poet she admits. ... So I explain perhaps the same could be said for my work some burden of American Indian emptiness in my poems how American Indian emptiness surfaces not just on the page but often on drives, in conversations or when I lie down to sleep. But the term American Indian parts our conversation like a hollow bloated boat that is not ours that neither my friend nor I want to board, knowing it will never take us anywhere but to rot. ...
And regarding a man saying "Well at least there was an apology, that's all I can say" �
Whereas I drive down the road replaying the get-together how a man and his beer bottle stated their piece and I reel at what I could have said or done better; Whereas I could've but didn't broach the subject of "genocide" the absence of this term from the Apology and its rephrasing as "conflict" for example; Whereas since the moment had passed I accept what's done and the knife of my conscience slices with bone-clean self-honesty; ... Whereas truthfully I wished most to kick the legs of that man's chair out from under him; ...
And one last one, because really you should just go get this book and read it yourself.
WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota, therein the question: what did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces. Until a friend comforted, don't worry, you and your daughter will learn together.
October 28, 2024
Goodness, I love this book. So happy to revisit (again, again).
February 14, 2022
This is a searing collection of powerful poems by an exciting and talented indigenous voice. Layli Long Soldier has a lot to say and work through as she responds to the documented history of the U.S. government’s insidious erasure and eradication of the indigenous peoples that occupied the land they wanted for themselves. From historical treaties with euphemistic wording to muddy their malicious intentions all the way up to the recent apology issued by Obama. She holds nothing back in her raw reaction and she leaves her heart and soul all over the pages of this creatively curious, biting and affecting collection.
March 31, 2022
this collection holds so much power in it! it's beautifully, painfully, and meticulously collected together to deconstruct language, form, and feelings in a way that rips across the personal to the collective. it's a stunning book that i know i'll go back to trying to remember certain poems, lines, phrases, and ways of perception.
"I listen for cracks in knuckles or in word choice, what is it that I want? To feel and mind you I feel from the senses..." (61)
"I to eye to I" (14)
"Pages are cavernous places, white at entrance, black in absorption.
Echo." (61)
"hear me too always
present the grasses
confident grasses polite
commands to shhhhh
shhh listen" (32)
"I listen for cracks in knuckles or in word choice, what is it that I want? To feel and mind you I feel from the senses..." (61)
"I to eye to I" (14)
"Pages are cavernous places, white at entrance, black in absorption.
Echo." (61)
"hear me too always
present the grasses
confident grasses polite
commands to shhhhh
shhh listen" (32)
August 18, 2024
Incredible talent applied to powerful subject matter. For whatever reason, I found it hard to connect at least half the time.
2.5 stars
2.5 stars
April 21, 2021
WHEREAS does so much to introduce the singular voice of Layli Long Soldier while also taking up the challenge to respond to (and REJECT) the paltry 'Apology' offered by the U.S. government to Indigenous peoples. This volume reminds me of Claudia Rankine's Citizen in that it articulates to be both American and Other. It also reminds me of M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!, because of the manner in which Long Soldier attempts to force open the maw of governmental discourse- she approaches the archive, clarifies its faulty language, and attempts to make the text speak anew. In the process, she seems to realize the impossibility of such a mission, or rather, only attempts to achieve proper reconciliation between the text and its designated parties in order to better argue that shared recognition between those who love each other is worth so much more than the condescending gaze of state authority.
So, this is a very political volume. You could say that its about the politics of language. Though, for a poet to write about the politics of language, the task becomes an observation on the politics of being, the language of being, and the embodied being of politics. A number of productive questions emerge. How does Long Soldier's page rearrange the text of the apology and how do we as readers weigh the voice of a singular body speaking her experience vs. the calculated, monolithic truth of the historical record? Where's the gap between truth and experience and how is it signified? It certainly doesn't occur in the space between the Whereas and the semicolon- "Where I must be firmly positioned to receive an apology the spot from which to answer" (71).
A couple more questions: What might occur if we were decide that we might be better off without that situatedness? If we were to refuse "that good faith / white cake / in a white / hole / that stained / refusal to come / clean" (71)? WHEREAS is a playing out of that refusal. It is a seeking out towards those who would like to turn away from the repeated failures of articulation on the part of the state- the state where even simple apologies are folded into a legislative hole. Violated, splintered by that hole, how does one begin to become whole? In refusal, Long Soldier situates her being in the world through the word- how might the reader follow? The first step, I think, would be to make room in the mouth for grassesgrassesgrasses.
So, this is a very political volume. You could say that its about the politics of language. Though, for a poet to write about the politics of language, the task becomes an observation on the politics of being, the language of being, and the embodied being of politics. A number of productive questions emerge. How does Long Soldier's page rearrange the text of the apology and how do we as readers weigh the voice of a singular body speaking her experience vs. the calculated, monolithic truth of the historical record? Where's the gap between truth and experience and how is it signified? It certainly doesn't occur in the space between the Whereas and the semicolon- "Where I must be firmly positioned to receive an apology the spot from which to answer" (71).
A couple more questions: What might occur if we were decide that we might be better off without that situatedness? If we were to refuse "that good faith / white cake / in a white / hole / that stained / refusal to come / clean" (71)? WHEREAS is a playing out of that refusal. It is a seeking out towards those who would like to turn away from the repeated failures of articulation on the part of the state- the state where even simple apologies are folded into a legislative hole. Violated, splintered by that hole, how does one begin to become whole? In refusal, Long Soldier situates her being in the world through the word- how might the reader follow? The first step, I think, would be to make room in the mouth for grassesgrassesgrasses.
November 20, 2017
"And whereas one of my students asks a visiting poet about education vaguely getting at what is worth pursuing? The poet suggests looking at whatever is/was missing in one's life and begin there. So many nods in the room around that table they acknowledge it too. In the missing power" (p. 67)
"Yet I smash head-on into this specific differentiation: *the* Creator vs. *their* Creator. Whereas this alters my concern entirely--how do I language a collision arrived at through separation?"
Those quotes point to the central concerns of Layli Long Soldier's truly exceptional first volume of poetry. Writing from her positions on Lakota land--linguistic, geographical, historical, political--she crafts languages and silences that address the various dispossessions of her people's (and Native people's generally) experience. The long title sequence provides a blistering indictment of the rhetorical evasions and fundamental emptiness of Obama's "apology" (there's no equivalent word in Lakoa) for...just what, isn't clear. Long Soldier excoriates our standard rhetoric of "both sides" were at fault and refuses to look away from the impact of the continuing US refusal to do anything meaningful in response to the crisis conditions on reservations, rural and urban.
There's quite a bit of self-reflexive meditation on the role of the poet and not all of it works well for me, especially the continuing experiments with the shape of words on the page. Some of those do work, however, notably the one where she points to the "white holes," the empty spaces left in typesetting, which stand in for the silences and elisions of historical documents.
Should be read, soon, my anyone interested in contemporary poetry, Native life, and/or the moral condition of the/our nation.
"Yet I smash head-on into this specific differentiation: *the* Creator vs. *their* Creator. Whereas this alters my concern entirely--how do I language a collision arrived at through separation?"
Those quotes point to the central concerns of Layli Long Soldier's truly exceptional first volume of poetry. Writing from her positions on Lakota land--linguistic, geographical, historical, political--she crafts languages and silences that address the various dispossessions of her people's (and Native people's generally) experience. The long title sequence provides a blistering indictment of the rhetorical evasions and fundamental emptiness of Obama's "apology" (there's no equivalent word in Lakoa) for...just what, isn't clear. Long Soldier excoriates our standard rhetoric of "both sides" were at fault and refuses to look away from the impact of the continuing US refusal to do anything meaningful in response to the crisis conditions on reservations, rural and urban.
There's quite a bit of self-reflexive meditation on the role of the poet and not all of it works well for me, especially the continuing experiments with the shape of words on the page. Some of those do work, however, notably the one where she points to the "white holes," the empty spaces left in typesetting, which stand in for the silences and elisions of historical documents.
Should be read, soon, my anyone interested in contemporary poetry, Native life, and/or the moral condition of the/our nation.
December 4, 2017
“How do I language a collision arrived at through separation?� Layli Long Soldier asks in Whereas, her commanding and utterly necessary collection, this query informing the book as a whole, Long Soldier deftly employing a poetics of fracture, erasure, and obscuration toward attacking the American empire’s innumerable, and woefully ongoing, lies to and betrayals of Native Americans, Long Soldier’s lyrical indictment of oppressive legalese, not to mention oppressive language generally, absolutely astonishing in its rigor and ingenuity.
February 14, 2017
Incredibly powerful. Essential reading.
September 4, 2018
Loved some, some left me cold, just as it should be with poetry - every reader and every reading is different - this is a rich collection I’ll be reading again.
April 6, 2024
I don’t know how to write about this book of poetry other than to say it is beautiful and powerful and painful and go read it.
August 21, 2020
awestruck
December 14, 2023
Another favourite poetry collection to grace my bookshelves
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