Exploding Chippewas

by Mark Turcotte

Everything this poet touches is volatile—the poet himself, the people and world around him, ideas and mythologies, the ghosts of memory and the dream of possible futures, all seem to burst into fragments. Mark Turcotte uses poetry to gather up the pieces—the shards of joy and grief, peace and doubt, strength and temptation, questions and answers—as he tries to define and rediscover what is lost when everyday life becomes explosive.
 

Genres: Poetry

83 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 2002

About the author

Native American (Chippewa) Poet. Writer Mark Turcotte spent his earliest years on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation and in the migrant camps of the western United States. Later, he grew up in and around Lansing, Michigan. After leaving school he traveled the country, working and living on the road for nearly fifteen years.

Arriving in Chicago in the spring of 1993 Turcotte rediscovered his love of words and writing and quickly established himself as a unique voice in the city's thriving poetry scene. That summer he was winner of the First Gwendolyn Brooks Open-mic Poetry Award. Soon thereafter he was selected by Ms. Brooks as a Significant Illinois Poet and was named to the Illinois Authors Poster. Since that time he has been the recipient of a Writer's Community Residency from National Writer's Voice and was awarded the 1997 Josephine Gates Kelly Memorial Fellowship from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.

Turcotte is author of The Feathered Heart, (Michigan State University Press, revised, 1998), Songs of Our Ancestors (Children's Press, 1995), a chapbook, Road Noise (Mesilla Press, 1998) and Le Chant de la Route (bilingual, La Vague Verte, 2001). His newest collection, Exploding Chippewas,(Northwestern University Press, 2002), is in its third printing. His work, four times nominated for Pushcart Prizes, has recently appeared in LUNA, TriQuarterly, POETRY, Prairie Schooner,Ploughshares, LUNA, The Missouri Review, The Seattle Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and The Laurel Review. His poem, The Flower On, was chosen by the Poetry Society of America for inclusion in their Poetry In Motion project, which places poetry placards on public transportation in cities across the United States. Recently he has also published short stories in Rosebud and Hunger Mountain.

Turcotte was the recipient of a 2001-2002 Lannan Foundation Literary Completion Grant, and has been awarded 1999 and 2003 Literary Fellowships by the Wisconsin Arts Board. He has just completed a National Book Foundation American Voices assignment at the Wind River Indian Reservation of Wyoming, and a Lannan Writer's Residency in Marfa, Texas. He currently lives and works out of Chicago and Kalamazoo.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poetry that is bound to keep you reading and rereading.

[Brian Brogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 - 4

[R.G. Ziemer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Turcotte read his poetry at College of DuPage last month as part of the Writers Read series and also participated in a panel discussion on the theme “Identity Matters.” A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Turcotte writes about his struggle to find his own identity caught between cultures. His “The Back When Poems” reflect life on the reservation and the meaning of Indian-ness, based on a comment by another who later referred to the time as “back when you used to be Indian.” Turcotte creates scenes with vivid imagery and figurative language, describing the sound of “thunder from out of the throat of the night” when “the sheets beneath me are soaked with memory.”

A second group of poems called “Road Noise” explore his feelings regarding the Indian father he missed as a child and whom he never really knew until he attended the man’s funeral. He tries to imagine “the story of your skin [that]echoes along the steel-ice rails that run like black-blood veins over the heart of America” and tries to understand “Men like you, who as boys, grieved for the thunder of the herds, dreamed of the thunder of the ponies and their hooves, that howling.”

The third group of poems also attempts to reconcile identity with his experience as an Indian, as a child, a man, a husband, and a father. “No Pie” poignantly recalls the prejudice the young mixed-blood Turcotte experienced. The collection ends with “Exploding Chippewas”, in which the ghosts of his ancestors appear in various forms before they explode, “burn to a flash.” They find him in different places in his life: his mother’s living room, a shabby motel room, a West Texas honky-tonk. He knows the voice of the first ghost “is the sound of sunlight dissolving, wings unfolding…” One ghost appears as “vapor spinning out of the ceiling fan”, others as steam, mist, light. Another ghost appears as heat, taking “the shape of the northern horizon.” One by one the ghosts reveal the helplessness of a man against time, blood, sadness.

Mark Turcotte’s voice is haunting and memorable, though, and in the end, his words give him power.

[Michael Brockley · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the wake of the George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson injustices, it becomes more important for readers to include the literature of diversity in one's reading rotation. In EXPLODING CHIPPEWAS, Mark Turcotte exposes the manner in which racism has affected his life, both as a reflection of father highway poems and those poems steeped in dreams and the visitation of ghosts who challenge his right to consider himself a Native American because his mother is white. The future of our nation depends upon our ability to end the centuries-old practice of marginalizing people based upon the color of their skin. Maybe the American literary reparation is in order, one that incorporates into the national canon THE SONG OF SOLOMON, THE BLUEST EYE, RESERVATION BLUES, THE ROUND HOUSE, CEREMONY, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, THE MEN WE REAPED, THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlings mysteries. This list is, of course, a sample but EXPLODING CHIPPEWAS would fit well in a roster of poetry volumes that expose the national experience beyond that of white America. There can be no American exceptionalism until we right these wrongs.

[Yasnani Yassin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the book. It is divided into three parts, and I really love the first part of the collection. I really love the idea of the poems progressing as a story from birth to death. And by far, my favorite is the first one, 'Continue'. It really does get my attention to read til end. I got the chance to meet Mr. Mark Turcotte earlier this year, and he is a great man, got many stories to share with people.

[Gary Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written in 2002 and I met the author in 2004 and it took to 2009 for this poetry impaired man to read the poems. I give great credit to the author for dealing with his demons which are many. I cannot judge the quality of the poems but I read with interest and some were very appealing. My favorites are Motion and the entire series called Road Noise.

[E.S. Wynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times gritty, at times playful, this collection of poetry offers some insight into the world of poet Mark Turcotte, highlighting the struggles of reservation life, of growing up "half indian," and of living in a world haunted by the spirits of his father and his ancestors.