Linda Hogan
Linda Hogan
Linda K. Hoganis a Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence...
song animal stories
A spoken story is larger than one unheard, unsaid. In nearly all creation accounts, words or songs are how the world was created, the animals sung into existence.
poetry strings parades
Poetry is a string of words that parades without a permit.
spiritual past attachment
And there is also the paradox that the dominating culture imbues the Indian past with great meaning and significance; it is valued more because it is seen as part of the past. And it is the romantic past, not the present, that holds meaning and spiritual significance for so many members of the dominating culture. It has seemed so strange to me that the larger culture, with its own absence of spirit and lack of attachment for the land, respects these very things about Indian traditions, without adopting those respected ways themselves.
ocean sea giving
tears have a purpose. they are what we carry of the ocean, and perhaps we must become the sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to be transformed.
flower differences space
Once a century, all of a certain kind of bamboo flower on the same day. Whether they are in Malaysia or in a greenhouse in Minnesota makes no difference, nor does the age or size of the plant. They flower. Some current of an inner language passes between them, through space and separation, in ways we cannot explain in our language. They are all, somehow, one plant, each with a share of communal knowledge.
beautiful children water-of-life
Sometimes there is a wellspring or river of something beautiful and possible in the tenderest sense that comes to and from the most broken of children, and I was one of these, and whatever is was, I can't name, I can only thank. Perhaps it is the water of life that saves us, after all.
attachment land justice
It has seemed so strange to me that the larger culture, with its own absence of spirit and lack of attachment for the land, respects these very things about Indian traditions, without adopting those respected ways themselves.
drinking sleep moon
Let's kneel down through all the worlds of the body like lovers. I know I am a tree and full of life and I know you, you are the flying one and will leave. But can't we swallow the sweetness and can't you sing in my arms and sleep in the human light of the sun and moon I have been drinking alone.
common spirit geography
There is a geography of the human spirit, common to all peoples.
struggle historical important
Telling about our lives is important for those who come after as, for those who will see our experience as part of their own historical struggle.
half answers mystery
Mystery is part of each life, and maybe it is healthier to uphold it than to spend a lifetime in search of half-made answers.
bird teeth crocodiles
The crocodile doesn't harm the bird that cleans his teeth for him. He eats the others but not that one.
law together want
Poetry has its own laws speaking for the life of the planet. It is a language that wants to bring back together what the other words have torn apart.
years listening-ear tree
A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I’ve envisioned that woman’s silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.