Shauna
Osborn. Arachnid Verve. Mongrel
Empire Press, Norman, OK. 91 pp. ISBN: 978-0997251715. http://mongrelempire.org/media/press-kits/arachnid-verve-by-shauna.html
from
fingers
from
feathers black & red
ink
drips across the page[1]
If writing a review were like sitting
on a jury it would be rare for Indigenous writers to get a fair trial. I point
this out as a way to introduce my bias in this case. I've been aware of Shauna
Osborn's work for some time, if I weren't I wouldn't qualify as a peer. In this
corner of poetry we review our relatives. Oklahoma poet Carroll Arnett / Gogisgi pointed out some time ago that if you live in the
"two worlds" there are very "few of us" (qtd in
Sanchez 144) So, grab a coney and a fried pie and let
me give you a tour of Arachnid Verve,
from someone who has deep roots in a different small Oklahoma town nearby.
Osborn is a Numuunu and German poet and this is her
first full-length solo collection.
My first reaction to this book was,
"Seriously? Why have a glossary and notes?" I don't like that kind of
translation. Too many people come with their begging bowl to poems and ask to
be given something in exchange for limited effort. I think that poetry deserves
deep reading, investigation and empathy. In particular I resist the notion that
work that is culturally unfamiliar to larger populations owe the readers a free
ticket. Then I grumpily read the glossary. I still resist them, but it is
difficult to get too unhappy with a glossary whose clarifications include "my
pussy," "to eat toothpaste on toast" and "slow moving warfare marked by
repeated stalemate" (89). There are also notes. The poet has made things easier
on the reader.
"If you were a man," the poetry avatar
is told in the two part poem "Double Standard," and
later, "Cause that's the way it is" (p 8-9). Frustration is measured in chopped
potatoes, "Furious thick brown skinned cubes" (9). The human identity in many
of these poems is an escape artist. She, like the spider in the poem "Truss,"
is "persistent & intractable" (23). External and judgmental forces create
and try to enforce shackles, but locks are picked, handcuffs slipped, and the
heroine continues her curious investigations. In "Altitude," "I recognize that
my stubbornness, will be the end of me" but in a subsequent section of the same
poem, "only clever prey survive" (29-32).
"Guionista
Sangre (Blood Writer)" may be the clearest thesis statement of all. The poet
with "ink maps [...] carved into her flesh" (81). She is "covered with paths [...] cultural
maps." These poems come from the body of the poet like the spider silk or
other, more difficult extractions. "We've never been taught geography never
known the contours of ourselves" (82). The landscape of body; the identities of
women; iconic images of what power looks like in a female form: the poet runs
her stories over the topological evidence, finds the unspoken there.
"Song for Nina," exhorts "tell me I'm
beautiful, tell me I'm real," because the witness is "right alongside me, and
you knew" (69). The poem is lean, almost stripped. It's a cry for recognized
identity "in our voice our
tongue" (70). In the book's quest, this issue of identity, of beauty, drives on
through line break, broken glass and damage and calls for someone powerful to speak.
In an environment of erasure and self-imposed invisibility, that of women, that of Native people, that of poverty, this voiced
wish itself is a truth telling.
Some wounds are so deep, have caused so
much damage that it is difficult to even begin the conversation. In "Wing,"
"Someone left an intact left wing on the sidewalk. There are no signs of foul
play-" (76). What mayhem caused this? There isn't enough left to evaluate the
crime scene. There is just a beautiful artifact, posed in a public place. The
poet wants to change the wing, "strap it onto my arm," or "carry this wing" (76-77)
There must be some way, in this vista of the avatar's "beautiful war scarred
students," to assemble something vital from all of these pieces.
Invoking social media in a review of a
poetry book is probably unforgivable but I'm going to do it. Every day on every
group page that filters into my social media there are dozens of challenges to
the authenticity, the reality, of some writer or other who claims a Western-Hemispherian identity. It is a prevailing topic, like
weather we might not have chosen, and like hard weather it has also swept away
some bridges and caused some to drown. For good reasons and for bad ones this
issue comes up and up. I have seen the authenticity argument explored in
poetry, in prose and in rant. If I look at my newsfeed right now I feel certain
that there are a few of these conversation threads underway. When an Indigenous
poet contemplates their reality, that contemplation is freighted with more than
some residue of a traumatic reading of Pinocchio.
In Arachnid Verve Osborn remains very
raw on this subject. The poet isn't protecting herself or the community in this
book any more than in the explorations of poverty or of being a woman. The word
is thrown around too often with respect to poetry but this work displays a deep
emotional honesty that is recognizable. This material is not easy.
I was always going to love this book.
Osborn has a muscular, grown woman style of writing that speaks to me. These
poems work hard, they sweat, they have unreasonable relatives, they wear jeans
and old boots, they aspire, they read widely and they bleed. This book is an
antidote. In a world moment where so many women ask to be allowed to speak,
these poems stand, feet planted, in the very center of territory they know is
theirs. These poems tell you exactly what they think. Osborn exists as witness
for self and fellow travelers. In our own languages, somewhere in the broken
glass, next to the scars or down the bike path next to the disembodied wing,
there is a place where we are beautiful, whole and real.
Kim
Shuck, California College of Art
Sanchez,
Carol Lee, From Spirit to Matter: New and
Selected Poems, 1969-1996. San Francisco: Taurean
Horn/Out West, 1997.