Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Simon Ortiz Speaks at Zimmerman

Mikaela admits:
Confirming this information is correct, but if it is...

Simon Ortiz, poet, Native, veteran, and activist, is speaking next Wednesday, July 26, 6:30 pm at the University of New Mexico as part of the Summer Sunset Lecture Series. I thought this was originally scheduled for June and was really upset I'd missed it. Here's hoping I don't miss it again, and you shouldn't, either (for the first time)!

His poems are hard to find on-line (what's fair use for poetry these days?), but I've (probably illegally) posted two here and here.

Here's another one someone else posted illegally, with importance as we contemplate escalating conflict around the world:

Simon J. Ortiz
(Acoma Pueblo)

from THE REMEMBERED EARTH
Edited by Geary Hobson
University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque NM, 1979




            THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A VETERAN'S DAY


            I happen to be a veteran
            but you can't tell in how many ways
            unless I tell you.

            A cold morning waking up on concrete;
            I never knew that feeling before,
            calling for significance,
            and no one answered.

            Let me explain it this way
            so that you may not go away
            without knowing a part of me:

            that I am a veteran of at least 30,000 years
            when I travelled with the monumental yearning
            of glaciers, relieving myself by them,
            growing, my children seeking shelter
            by the roots of pines and mountains.

            When it was that time to build,
            my grandfather said, "We cut stone and mixed mud
            and ate beans and squash and sang
            while we moved ourselves. That's what we did."
            And I believe him.

            And then later on in the ancient and deep story
            of all our nights, we contemplated,
            contemplated not the completion of our age,
            but the continuance of the universe,
            the travelling, not the progress,
            but the humility of our being there.

            Caught now, in the midst of wars
            against foreign disease, missionaries,
            canned food, Dick & Jane textbooks, IBM cards,
            Western philosophies, General Electric,
            I am talking about how we have been able
            to survive insignificance.