The Book of Bearings

By Diane Glancy

The Book of Bearings puts the puzzle pieces of the New World together without a picture on the puzzle box. The characters struggle to situate themselves between what they were and what they are supposed to become. The poems include voices from the mid-nineteenth-century Cherokee Female Seminary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and the mid-twentieth-century Eskimo experience in Alaska, as well as personal narratives. This book addresses the Native American process of assimilation from first contact through education in the civilized world. It is a view of that world from the eyes of those who were seen as the conquered.
The Book of Bearings seeks its bearing in a shifting world. Often it focuses on the effects of Christianity. The characters use the new language to frame their various experiences. They use language as a tool for understanding what cannot fully be understood, which, for the believer, is the transformation in Christ when he left the world charged with his light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Feb 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532672170

Diane Glancy

Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. She has published six books with Wipf & Stock— Uprising of Goats (2014), One of Us (2015), Ironic Witness (2015), Mary Queen of Bees (2017), and The Servitude of Love (2017). Check out my interview with Sheila Tousey

Book preview

9781532672156.kindle.jpg

The Book of Bearings

Diane Glancy

3153.png

The Book of Bearings

The Poiema Poetry Series

Copyright ©

2019

Diane Glancy. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-7215-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-7216-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-7217-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Glancy, Diane, author.

Title: The Book of Bearings / Diane Glancy.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2018.

| The Poiema Poetry Series.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-5326-7215-6 (

paperback

). | isbn 978-1-5326-7216-3 (

hardcover

). | isbn 978-1-5326-7217-0 (

ebook

).

Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—

21

st century.

Classification:

PS3557 .L294 B55 2019 (

paperback

). | PS3557 (

ebook

).

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

12/11/18

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

The Book of Bearings

Variations in Magnetism

The Book of Bearings

Chief Odysseus

Trying To Figure Out the World

We Played in the Sandbox Building Jamestown

Homer

Garden Tools

Odysseus’ Ship

Determining a Position

Learning to Write the Alphabet

When Horses Weren’t Looking

Bible Pages as a Mission

Register of Departures

The Water Blue from Sorrow

The Longing of All That Is Going

The Confessions of St. Bo-gast-ah at the Cherokee Female Seminary, Indian Territory, 1859–1864

The Confessions of St. Bo-gast-ah

St. Bo-gast-ah Hears the Confession of the Deer

St. Bo-gast-ah Hears the Confession of St. Ruth

St. Bo-gast-ah Hears the Confession of the Land

St. Bo-gast-ah Hears the Confession of the Storm

St. Bo-gast-ah’s Confession to God in Later Years

That Was There Like Something

Trestle Game

Flower-heads

Zinnia

Father

Son

Childhood Memories

Holy Ghost

The Lord Spoke to the Fish—Jonah 2:10

Stopped on The 5 North of San Diego

Tooth

Alonso: Wound the loud winds, or with bemocked-at stab kill the still-closing waters—

Prospero: . .  . . . my ending in despair unless I be relieved by prayer—

I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus—

Dead Reckoning

If Not Residential School Then Where to Go

Everything You Do Must Be Bible

Dead Reckoning

Letter

Choctaw Academy, 1825–45, Scott County, Kentucky National Register of Historic Places

Determining a Position

The Unwelcome News

One Becoming the Other

Upon Arrival

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Finding the bearings of a book is difficult as finding the Geographic North from the Magnetic North, which are two different places. The