A Bridge Dead in the Water

ISBN-13: 9781844712700 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 120 str.

James Thomas Thomas Stevens

Opis

A dead bridge, a dead theory - the Bering Strait theory, dead to Native peoples, whose hundreds of creation accounts dispel those of anthropologists. This collection of poems by Mohawk poet, James Thomas Stevens, written after a trip to China in 2002. After entering the catholic Xujiahui cathedral across from his hotel, he was led to do research on Jesuit interactions with Asia. What he encountered there in the cathedral and in museums in Shanghai, was reminiscent of the history of Jesuits in his home in Iroquoia, especially in the Mohawk homelands along the Saint Lawrence River. The first poem in the collection, (dis)Orient, addresses issues of charting and mapping, as well as issues of authority. It leads to short poems written in and about China, then on to the central poem, The Mutual Life, a poem of post-colonial and personal emergencies - a poem of healing, as well,