Raven's Echo

By Robert Davis Hoffmann and Reginald Dyck

In Raven’s Echo, Tlingit artist and poet Robert Davis Hoffmann calls on readers to nurture material as well as spiritual life, asking beautiful and brutal questions about our individual positions within the universe and within history. The poems in this collection are brimming with an imaginative array of characters, including the playful yet sometimes disturbing trickster Raven, and offer insights into both traditional and contemporary Native life in southeast Alaska.

Raven’s Echo is divided into two books, “SoulCatcher” and “Reconstruction.” “SoulCatcher” artfully explores human alienation and spiritual longing through poems that describe the speaker’s enduring struggle to find a place in Tlingit tribal history and contemporary experience. It takes up topics like colonialism, government subordination, painful acculturation, assimilation, and an array of other challenges, while it also addresses human loneliness in a world of spirits who often elude rather than nurture. The poems in “Reconstruction” present ways of integrating traditional Tlingit culture into contemporary life by honoring the significance of the land, subsistence fishing, warrior identity, and the role of elders. The two books are woven together by the constant thread of finding a way to live humanely in a world that is historically fractured yet spiritually inviting.

Hoffmann’s poetry is acutely aware of economic, political, and social tensions, while still highlighting the joy of traditions and the beauty of Alaskan nature throughout the collection. The destructiveness of colonialism brings a profound darkness to some of the poems in Raven’s Echo, but the collection also explores the possibility of finding spiritual healing in the face of historical and contemporary traumas. As Hoffman’s poetry grapples with reconstructing a life within Tlingit tradition and history, the speaker urges that the importance of honoring and remembering traditions through art is ever present: “Listen, I’m trying to say something— / always our stories have lived through paintings, / always our stories stayed alive through retelling.” Raven’s Echo may tell stories about living in a world of guns and horsepower, global warming, cops, and drunks—but Raven always lurks in the background.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9780816546909

Book preview

Cover Page for Raven's Echo

Raven’s Echo

Volume 91

Sun Tracks

An American Indian Literary Series

SERIES EDITOR

Ofelia Zepeda

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

Larry Evers

Joy Harjo

Geary Hobson

N. Scott Momaday

Irvin Morris

Simon J. Ortiz

Craig Santos Perez

Kate Shanley

Leslie Marmon Silko

Luci Tapahonso

Raven’s Echo

Robert Davis Hoffmann

Afterword by Reginald Dyck

University of Arizona Press, Tucson

The University of Arizona Press

www.uapress.arizona.edu

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to twenty-two federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the University strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.

© 2022 by Robert Davis Hoffmann

All rights reserved. Published 2022

ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4471-4 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4690-9 (ebook)

Cover design by Leigh McDonald

Cover and interior art by Robert Davis Hoffmann

Designed and typeset by Leigh McDonald in Goudy Modern MT 10-75/14 and Brandon Grotesque (display).

Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available at the Library of Congress.

Printed in the United States of America

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

This book is dedicated to the people of my Tsaagweidi clan. They demonstrate to me the principles of perseverance, adaptation, strength, and community. We shall continue to honor our ancestors, our homeland of Skanax (previously known as Saginaw Bay), and our connection to the land and to one another.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Book One: SoulCatcher

I

Raven Tells Stories

Raven Laughs

Raven Arrives

Raven Moves

Saginaw Bay: I Keep Going Back

II

SoulCatcher

Naming the Old Woman

Drowning

Fragment of a Legend

Modern Indians

The Albino Tlingit Carving Factory

Daddy

What the Crying Woman Saw

At the Door of the Native Studies Director

Black Buoy

III

Outgrowing Ourselves

The Indian Giver Called Death

The Inhabitant

Fertility Rite

The Man Who Loved Knots

Game

Archeology

Eviction

IV

Fasting for Eight Days

Change of Season

Into the Forest

Taking the Night Trail

Home

Raven Is Two-Faced

Raven Dances

Book Two: Reconstruction

I

Village Boy

He Was a Dancer

Blind Man

Warriors

Rock of Ages

II

Global Warming

Seattle Blues

Danger Point, Bainbridge Island

III

Division

Kake Townsite Survey 3851

Monster

Leveling Grave Island

IV

To Draw My Hand

Carving

Reconstruction

Afterword: Raven’s Echo as Reconstruction Project

Preface

If I make words, they are Raven’s echo. If I move, it is in that rhythm, Raven’s heartbeat.

When I wrote these lines from Raven Moves, I characterized Raven as an unpredictable and restless Trickster who intervenes in human affairs, often making humans miserable, plagued with fear and uncertainty.

This collection of poems spans different stages of my life. I was twenty-one years old when Raven’s Bones Press published SoulCatcher. The early poems represent the mental state of an angry, victimized young person. The poems were a way of lashing out, with their anger directed at perceived foes.

In truth, there is much injustice that outraged me. In 1869, the United States Army did bomb the village of Kake on Kupreanof Island, my home village, and then burned the rest to the ground. They proceeded to do the same with all the villages on nearby Kuiu Island. Missionaries in Kake persuaded my people to destroy their totems. In my own lifetime, ministers encouraged my people to burn their regalia.

I have to mention the boarding schools because even though I was not subjected to that cruelty, its effects filtered down to me.