Migration Tears: Poems About Transitions - Softcover

Michael Kabotie (Lomawywesa)

9780935626322: Migration Tears: Poems About Transitions

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0935626328 ISBN 13: 9780935626322

Publisher: University of California, 1987

poems dealing with separation, transition & loss Includes: 10:40 Scottsdale Sunspots, 17th Brentwood Mesa, 1:00 P.m. Christown, The Alcoholic, Between, The Buffalo Dancer, Cass, Coming Of Day, Eaglet Flight #583, Easyway Rainbow, Flower Of Rising Sun, Grand Canyon National Park, Hopid, Reganomics, Rubber Bands, Walrus Kokopolu

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About the Author:

Michael Kabotie or Lomawywesa, son of the artist Fred Kabotie, was born in 1942 at Shungopavi. He is of the Hopi Sinnum, Water/Snow clan, and he is a painter, lithographer, serigrapher, goldsmith and silversmith. In this book of poetry he recreates Hopi traditions for modern Indians in bold, traditional strokes.

Review:

Migration Tears (1987) is introduced in an illuminating forward by UCLA's Kenneth Lincoln, well known analyst of the renaissance in Native American literature. His useful remarks reflect over a decade of contacts with Kabotie, and they help prepare readers for the humor and special balance of this Hopi poet, who is also a painter, lithographer, and smith in silver and gold. We learn that Mike Kabotie, or Lomawywesa, son of artist Fred Kabotie, was born in 1942 at Shungopavei, one home of the Hopi people, who number about 6,500 and live, where they have for centuries, on three mesas northeast of present day Flagstaff, Arizona. What Professor Lincoln leaves us to see is the pattern or patterns that the book contains. One poem that strikes a unifying note is called Thanksgiving. 79, and it ends with these three lines: Final Score: Emergence/renewal: 7, War/destruction: 6. A bare victory, it seems, for which perhaps one may give thanks? The date of the poem is some years ago, but one realizes that 1979 for a poet born in 1942 isn t long ago, and, more important, it is the birthday of an insight. This insight pulls the collection together and helps make the book, finally, a positive one- caustic at times, realistic, but ultimately positive. What the very traditional, yet wry and immediate, voice in this book addresses is survival-as one travels across boundaries, in both one s own life and the epochs one may rarely but keenly sense one is passing through in the finite life of the particular civilization that conquered the homeland of Native Americans... from MELUS, the journal published by The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) v. 21, no. 1 1996 --David W. Tyree, Portland State University

Kabotie's Migration Tears is a collection of original poems supplemented by six plates duplicating his graphic art. Known primarily as a painter, he here juxtaposes original poetry with prints of his work. In doing so he links enduring Hopi traditions with images drawn from contemporary life both poetically and graphically. In the poem "Kachinum" for example, the katchinas, who have been summoned"from metaphysical dimensions", have "hair flowing like rain".. The eye is then drawn to the print duplicated on the facing page, where indeed falling rain merges with katchina-hair. This too is an offsize volume, neither small enough to resemble the standard old octovo, nor quite big enough to resemble the larger quarto. Printed with obvious care on quality clay-coated paper, it has as an added striking feature a cover illustration containing one of Kabotie's graphic works that suggests a merger of ancient Hopi design and modern cubist techniques...American Indian Quarterly; Fall92, Vol. 16 Issue 4, p533, 5p --Paul G. Zolbrod, Allegheny College.

Artists continue to translate the Hopi vision for current generations. Kabotie turns from painting and craftsmanship to poetic incantation. He explores life in present-day New Mexico through a tradition of ancient chants and prayers. It is an abstruse approach but suited to his double existence as tribesman and contemporary American. Hopi spirits are called upon to dispel suffering on the ancestral mesa and beyond. Overall, Kabotie's poems are more wry than grim. His meditations on Thanksgiving, now consecrated in football ritual, or on the Grand Canyon, "discovered in 1540," chip at the icons of American life...American Studies International; Apr90, Vol. 28 Issue 1, p97, 1/4p --Nan Thompson Ernst

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