This week I am featuring another former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Denise Sweet. Denise was appointed Wisconsin’s second Poet Laureate by then Governor Doyle in January 2005 and served as Poet Laureate until the end of 2008.
Denise is Anishinaabe (Google it if you don’t know), and is a Professor Emeritus of UW-Green Bay. Along the way, she also taught seminars in the Yucatan Peninsula as well Guatemala, where she did field work among the Mayans. Her poetry books have won several awards, among them the Posner Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, as well as from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her most recent book, published in 2018 is “Palominos Near Tuba City: New and Selected Poems” (Holy Cow! Press). Here is the title poem from that collection. I love the images in this poem:
stars passing into dream song, planets spinning like pinwheels, chasing down poems like ponies and forcing them into corrals, etc. Get ready to stand in the stampede and hold on for dear life.
Palominos Near Tuba City
In the desert of burning dreams, of armadillo and centipede,
I would call this night pitch dark back home
I would watch for any star to pass into dream song
or point of light called planet to whirl and twist like
a tiny pinwheel swallowing me to its vanishing point
Here under pewter sky with words out of breath.
I chase poems down like wild mares into forced corrals
I watch close calls with wisdom rear and kick
against the fences of good judgement.
I used to think the skies brought them home,
thundering hooves and swollen bellies, ready to spark
and fire the dry bony floor, sulphuric aroma real as rain
but now, the horses of white lightning gallop toward me
afraid of nothing, they rush with an eye for hesitation
ready to brush up against my heart with their horse madness.
Here, it is the rider standing in the wavering heat, erect
and indisputable as a lightning rod braced in the open
I stand my ground and wait, ready to hold on for dear life.
Here is a link to her page on the Poet Laureate Commission’s website:
http://www.wisconsinpoetlaureate.org/denise-sweet