Changing Is Not Vanishing

Until now, the study of American Indian literature has tended to concentrate on contemporary writing. Although the field has grown rapidly, early worksespecially poetryremain mostly unknown and inaccessible. Changing Is Not Vanishing reinvents the early history of American Indian literature and the history of American poetry by presenting a vast but forgotten archive of American Indian poems. Through extensive archival research in small-circulation newspapers and magazines, manuscripts, pamphlets, forgotten rare books, and scrapbooks, Robert Dale Parker has uncovered the work of more than 140 early Indian poets who wrote before 1930.Changing Is Not Vanishing includes poems by 82 writers and provides a full bibliography of all the poets Parker has identifiedmost of them unknown even to specialists in Indian literature. In a wide range of approaches and styles, the poems in this collection address such topics as colonialism and the federal government, land, politics, nature, love, war, Christianity, and racism. With a richly informative introduction and extensive annotation, Changing Is Not Vanishing opens the door to a treasure trove of fascinating, powerful poems that will be required reading for all scholars and readers of American poetry and American Indian literature.

Auteur
Robert Dale Parker is James M. Benson Professor in English and Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the editor of The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Contenu

The Garden of the Mind: An Introduction to Early American Indian Poetry

POEMS

Eleazar
In obitum Viri verè Reverendi D. Thomae Thacheri, Qui Ad Dom. ex hâc Vitâ migravit, 18.8.1678
English translation: On the death of that truly venerable man D. Thomas Thacher [written 1678, published 1702

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwe)
Pensive Hours [written 1820, published 1962]
The Contrast [written 1823 and possibly later, published 2007]
Invocation To my Maternal Grandfather On hearing his descent from Chippewa ancestors misrepresented [written 1823, published 1860]
To the Pine Tree on first seeing it on returning from Europe
Translation [English translation of "To the Pine Tree"] [2007]
By an Ojibwa Female Pen, Invitation to sisters to a walk in the Garden, after a shower [written by 1826, published 1962]
Lines to a Friend Asleep [written by 1827, published 1962]
To my ever lamented and beloved son William Henry [written 1827, published 1962]
To the Miscodeed [2007]
On Meditation [2007]
Sweet Willy [written 1835 or later, published 2007]
Lines written at Castle Island, Lake Superior [written 1838, published 2007]
On leaving my children John and Jane at School, in the Atlantic states, and preparing to return to the interior [written 1838 or 1839, published
1851]
English translation of "On leaving my children . . . " [2007]

William Walker, Jr. (Wyandot)
["Oh, give me back my bended bow"] [written approximately in the 1820s, published 1882 and perhaps earlier]
The Wyandot's Farewell [written 1843, published 1882 and perhaps earlier]
Israel Folsom (Choctaw)
Lo! The Poor Indian's Hope [written perhaps around 1831, published 1875]
An Indian (Jesse Bushyhead?) (Cherokee)
The Indian's Farewell [1848]
John Rollin Ridge / Yellow Bird (Cherokee)
An Indian's Grave [1847]
Reflections Irregular [1848]
My Harp [1848]
Song ("Come to the river's side, my love") [1848]
Song ("I saw her onceher eye's deep light") [1848]
The Man of Memory [1848]
"The man twenty feet high . . . " [1848]
The Dark One to His Love [1849]
The Still Small Voice ("There is a voice more dear to me") [1851]
The Humboldt Desert [1867]
Mount Shasta [1853, 1854, 1868]
The Atlantic Cable [1868]
Humboldt River [1860, 1868]
To a Star Seen at Twilight [1849, 1868]
The Forgiven Dead [1868]
To a Mocking Bird Singing in a Tree [1868]
The Rainy Season in California [1868]
The Harp of Broken Strings [1850, 1868]
October Hills [1867, 1868]
To the Beautiful [1868]
A Night Scene [1868]
False, but Beautiful [1868]
To L on Receiving Her Portrait [1868]
The Stolen White Girl [1868]
Poem ("The waves that murmur at our feet") [1868]
Erinna [1848, 1868]
Lines on a Humming Bird Seen at a Lady's Window [1868]
Poem ("All hail, the fairest, greatest, best of days!") [1868]
A Scene Along the Rio de las Plumas [1868]
The Still Small Voice ("Alas, how every thing will borrow") [1848, 1851,1868]
Eyes [1853, 1868]

Te-con-ees-kee (Cherokee)
Suggested by the report, in the Advocate, of the laying of the corner stone of the Pocahontas Female SeminaryCherokee Nation [1848]
["Though far from thee Georgia in exile I roam"] [1848]

Si-tu-a-kee, Jr. (Cherokee)
To the Tahlequah Gals [1850]

William Penn Boudinot (Cherokee)
["There is a spectre ever haunting"] [1851]

Tso-le-oh-woh (Cherokee)
A Red Man's Thoughts [1853]
What an Indian Thought When He Saw the Comet [1853] C. H. Campbell (Cherokee)
["Our tribe could once of many warriors boast"] [1855]
Former Student of the Cherokee Male Seminary (Cherokee)
The Rose of Cherokee [1855]
Joshua Ross (Cherokee)
My Ruling Star [1855]
Sequoyah [1856]
The Wanderer [1856]
On a Lady's Eyes [1859]
Peter Perkins Pitchlynn (Choctaw)
Song of the Choctaw Girl [undated, probably 1850s, published 1972]
["Will you go with me"] [undated, probably 1856 or 1857, published 1972]
John Gunter Lipe (Cherokee)
To Miss Vic [written 1861, published 1921]
Anonymous Cherokee (Cherokee)
["Faster and fiercer rolls the tide"] [1871]
David J. Brown (Cherokee)
Sequoyah [1879]
James Harris Guy (Chickasaw)
["The white man wants the Indian's home"] [1878]
Lament of Tishomingo [1879]<br&gt...