Dog Road Woman

by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Autobiographical sketch of Hedge Coke, a mixed-blood woman, presented in her debut collection of poems.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

About the author

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke authored books include: The Year of the Rat, (American Book Award) Dog Road Woman and Off-Season City Pipe, poetry; Rock Ghost, Willow, Deer, a memoir; and Blood Run, a verse-play that served to lobby for legislation and protection of the Indigenous site. 2014 works: Burn, MadHat Press and Streaming, Coffee House Press. Hedge Coke has edited eight additional collections, including Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, Effigies, & Effigies II (2014) & directs the Literary Sandhill CraneFest. She came of age cropping tobacco and working fields, waters, and working in factories.

Reviews

[Michelle Boyer]

A collection of poems that share Native American experiences and highlight, often, the negative aspects of living in a colonized world. The poems are haunting, loving, and at the same time something that you cannot easily set aside. While I tended to prefer her shorter poems--feeling they were more precise and less words were used to make more impact--there is a balance of different length poems, different themes/topics, and overall it is a wonderfully packaged collection.

I highly recommend this for those interested in poetry, and especially so if you're interested in Indigenous poets.

[David]

The poems in this collection weave magnificent stories out of amazingly arranged and chosen language. The voice in the poems chants unhesitatingly about horrors endured and the triumph at being unbroken despite the horrors. The wisdom in the voice seems to speak beyond personal experience as well, touching a memory that is much more expansive than what has been lived. Perhaps a connection to something larger that many people ignore or do not have access to. This expansiveness, this beyondness, its presence in the poems shines constantly, making the truth embodied in the words recognizable instantly, like only something that has always been known but may have been forgotten can be inherently recognized. The words of the poems all seem to have this marvelous rhythm as well, something much more rich than music. Sometimes soft yet insistent, sometimes a blasting explosion of images and thoughts, all of it beautiful and wonderful.

[Robin Yaklin]

Wow, what a life.

[J.M. Wang]

Interesting and powerful. At times heart-breaking. The first book of poetry I've ever read on the Native American experience.