July 30, 1990 - El Paso Herald-Post
Small presses bypass academic contrivances
... talent coupled with passion makes poets, makes works of art as opposed to academic contrivances," Michael Hogan writes in the afterword of "The Light from another Country: Poetry from American Prisons."
The book is an anthology put together by Joseph Bruchac, publisher of The Greenfield Review Press, as well as a fine journal of the same name, The Greenfield Review. For a copy, write The Greenfield Press, R.D. 1, Box 80, Greenfield Center, N.Y. 12833, $9.95.
Hogan further says that "poetry is what moves us as audience to a new and passionate vision of our own concerns."
Bruchac's life is testimonial to such words. He has created through his talent, passion and will a process of poetry, a way of life, and by so doing has given the world the impassioned power of language.
His publishing house is akin to words which celebrate life while confronting "our own concerns," our individual sensibilities and fears. Alongside the prison literature anthology, Bruchac has also compiled broad-ranging ones that are important, as well as moving, and which reach out to the reader and share the other Americas usually absent from the mainstream.
"Songs from This Earth on Turtle's Back: Contemporary America Indian Poetry" is a tour of perspectives and spiritual visions, of poetry which sings the many tribal songs of Turtle Island, another and more ancient name for the North American continent.
Simon Ortiz, an Acoma poet, shares his voice and it is a New Mexico near Gallup, and the cadences have the power of drums resonating in a patient understanding of the earth.
Harold Littlebird takes us into the psyche of Santo Domingo Pueblo, while Leslie Silko flies,through the legends of Laguna Pueblo. Luci Tapahonso weaves poetry which seems to jut out like mountain crags in the Navajo Nation, and one can hear the palpitation of the rugged land and envision Dineh storytellers.
N. Scott Momaday, the Kiowa poet and writer, pierces the moment with language that is fluid, and the other contributors make for a good read.
Equally enjoyable is "Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets," also edited and published by Bruchac. There are many poets from the different Asian American communi represented.
Bruchac's own storytelling is an enjoyable "The Faithful Hunter: Abenaki Stories." These are not recent publications, but they are works outside the mainstream by poets and writers who write about existence on the margins of our society.
Bruchac sent me some books as well as a fairly extensive catalog of books by non-mainstream writers and poets, by those who do not exist in the usual grab-bag of mall and limited university shops.
There is a wealth of materials being painstakingly published by small, alternative presses nationwide - exciting work created in the cauldron of human experience, and not within conrived academic corridors.
It is that publishing world the small press - that a Whitman would have found a place in, for literature is created within the real world of people and not in the emptyscapes of virtual imaginings in Iowan universities. Write for a catalogue - better yet, reach out and buy some of these works and savor the words, passion and understandings of those other Americas which nurture our diversity.