Margaret Noodin, an American of Anishinaabe descent, also a scholar, linguist and poet (1965 -) Photo Credit:University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Navendamowin Mitigaakiing
Apii dibikong gaashkendamyaan miinawaa goshkoziyaan
endigwenh waa ezhichigewag bagoji Anishinaabensag odenang,
mitigwaakiing izhaayaan miinawaa anweshinyaan.
Nimawadishaag zhingwaakwag miinawaa okikaandagoog
Nibizindaawaag zhashagiwag miinawaa ajiijaakwag.
Nimaatookinaag zaagaa’igan ogaawag miinawaa apakweshkwayag.
Niwaabaandaanan wesiinhyag-miikanan miinawaa nakwejinaanig
Miidash apii bidaaban niswi giosewag miinawaa
niizhwaaswi nimisenhyag dibiki-giizhigong gaazhad
baabimoseyaan nikeye naawakweg zoongide’eyaan.
Margaret Noodin from Native Voices, ed.CMarie Furman & Dean Rader, Tupelo Press, 2019
Woodland Liberty
When in the night I am weary and awake wondering
what the wild young Anishinaabeg of the cities will do,
into the woods I go and rest.
I visit with the white pines and the jack pines.
I listen to the herons and the cranes.
I share the lake waters with the walleye and the cattails.
I marvel at the complexity of wild paths and webs woven.
Then when the dawn hides the three hunters
and seven sisters of the night sky
I walk bravely toward the noonday.
Margaret Noodin , trans. Margaret Noodin, from Native Voices, ed.CMarie Furman & Dean Rader, Tupelo Press, 2019
You may hear an echo of another famous poem (copied below) in Noodin’s poem. But first I wanted to celebrate this poem on its own and its last line. I walk bravely toward the noonday. And how it makes me wonder what it is I need to do to walk bravely toward the noonday of the Covid-19. We read that faced with deeply troubling thoughts Noodin goes into a meditative space surrounded by things she loves in the natural word. Her poem forces me to also ask where do I find succour in these troublous times? And where do you?
I was thrilled to come across Margaret Noodin’s poetry in Tupelo Press’s 2019 volume Native Voices, an anthology of Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations. Even better to discover that Noodin writes her poems first in Anishinaabemovin, the native language of the Anishinaabe whose lands surround the Great Lakes in the U.S. and Canada. Noodin then translates her poems into English through a process she calls lyric explanations.
In Native Voices Noodin says: Only by combining a poet’s love of words and a linguists passion for detail with many hours of Objibwe conversation did I find my own voice. And what a voice it is even in English. I so wish I could hear her read it in her Anishinaabemovin version above.
Noodin is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is also active in teaching the Anishinaabe language in her varied cultural communities. And on-line I found this biographical information as well which ties in I think to her featured photo for this blog post: With her daughters, Shannon and Fionna, she is a member of Miskwaasining Nagamojig (the Swamp Singers) a women’s hand drum group whose lyrics are all in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe).
When I read that first line in English of Woodland Liberty I instantly heard the echo of Wendell Berry’s well-known poem, The Peace of Wild Things. And as I kept reading I realized the poem was, in a sense, her indigenous translation of Berry’s poem. On Poets.Org she calls her poem her response to The Peace of Wild Things. I find her response or translation a reinvigoration of Berry’s poem. It brings it to life in a fresh way and in key places is less abstract which adds to its impact. And by this I don’t mean it diminishes Berry’s poem but makes it stand on its own as something new and not an inferior copy.
Here’s what I mean. Instead of Berry’s : When despair for the world grows in me/and I wake in the night at the least sound/ in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, Noodin gives us: When in the night I am weary and awake wondering/ what the wild young Anishinaabeg of the cities will do…The extra specifics about the young Anishinaabeg of the cities makes her worry much more fraught. I know what a danger our cities are to those young people. This also gives a context to make her poem, her own. Also, hear the power of her repeated “w” sounds.
In her second stanza her anaphora (same words or phrases repeated in subsequent sentences) and the larger list of things from the woodland’s natural world adds a further intensity. Especially when the young Anishinaabeg are going into the city not the liberty of the woodlands. Her list amps up the energy compared to Berry. And in a critical omission she leaves out any translation of Berry’s two key lines: I come into the peace of wild things/ who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. These are among his most quoted signature lines. Even though they are beautiful they do more telling than showing and it would be hard to translate those without copying Berry directly.
Instead of trying to translate Berry’s key lines she leaves them unsaid and then adds the glorious details from indigenous story telling of the names of the stars: the three hunters and seven sisters, This so personalizes the vastness of a morning sky. Instead of Berry’s day-blind stars (a lovely phrase on its own) she uses the more kentic phrase: when dawn hides and then names the stars it hides. And when she walks into the day it is not so abstract as Berry when he says: For a time/I rest in the grace of the world and I am free. Hers is more direct and visceral: I walk bravely toward the noonday. Someting more specific and difficult. To walk in the harsh light of the noonday sun that hides nothing.
It is always a brave thing to write a poem that echoes another. Especially one as famous as Berry’s. And to echo one as closely as she does Berry’s. I do not think Noodin’s poem suffers by comparison. Instead we end up with two powerfully crafted and consoling poems that reach out to us in a time of deep world-wide worry and concern. May we all find our own ways how to bravely face Covid-19 in a generous-hearted manner (no hoarding!) and to find in ourselves the peace of wild things.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and I am free.
Wendell Berry from Collected Poems 1957-1982, North Point Press, 1984