Mother/Land is a book of poetry by writer and artist Abenaki Cheryl Savageau published in 2006 by Salt Publishing. According to the Salt Publishing website, Mother/Land "radically remapped New England as a Native American space". The website for Dawnland Voices notes that some New England-specific places written by Savageau in his poems include the Pemigewasset River in New Hampshire and Lake Quinsigamond in Massachusetts.
In his collection, Savageau explores several different themes, including retelling Abenaki's narration, investigating his personal life and his relationship with his mother, sexuality, lingering colonialism, the material world (especially pieces from his mother's jewelry collection), and the natural environment and environmental issues.
Video Mother/Land
Form
Most of Savageau's poems in Mother/Land are written in free verse, while it should be noted that some poems are concrete poems, meaning that the poetry structure visually reflects or represents the subject of the poem.. His poems about material things like his mother's jewelry pieces use this aesthetic form of poetry. Savageau also includes some poem prose on Mother/Land.
Maps Mother/Land
Contents
Mother/Land
"First Diamond"; "Amber Necklace"; "Turtle"; "Another Face of the Moon"; "First woman"; "Opal"; "Game Bag"; "Ants Tree"; "Emerald"; "Hair"; "The Willow at Flint Pond"; "In Sugarloaf"; "Fertility Rate"; "Twentieth Anniversary Diamond"; "Algonkian Paradise"; "Race Point, Provincetown"; "Grand Banks"; "Pies"; "Bread"; "Where I Want Them"; "Swift River"; "Red"
Ghosts in the World Center
"Garnet"; "Hummingbird Moth"; "Cod"; "Every where"; "Before Moving to Plymouth from Cape Cod - 1620"; "Woodchuck's Grandmother Speaks to Salem Woman"; "Traces of the English"; "Newfoundland Walking with Joseph Brant"; "Daughters of the King"; "Mendel's Milkmen"; "Pink Sapphire"; "The Kneeing Girl"; "Mexican Amethyst"; "Pearl Cufflinks"; "Nested"; "No Pity"; "Beauty Tips"; "Surrogate Mother"; "For Lenny, For Lisa"; "Liar"; "Effects"; "Rose Quartz Necklace"; "Tradition"; "Ring of Protection"; "Poison in the Pond"; "Smallpox"; "Indian Blood"; "Graduate School First Semester"; "Candle holder"; "Crayon"; "Pink Ice with Marcasite"; "Pemigewasset"
Visit the Land of the Dead
"North Country: Visiting the Land of the Dead"; "Caught"; "Morning: UMass Medical Center"; "Hurricane - North Truro"; "Side Pass"; "Night sky"; "Rosary"; "Grandma Woodchuck as St. Ann"; "Jewelry Box"; "Dress up"; "Piano Dream"; "Purple Ice"; "Figure Eight"; "Like a Good Death"
Ke Green
"Peridot"; "Blue House"; "For Boy Stand under Drainpipe"; "Waiting for the Feathers"; "Monastic School"; "Under age"; "Onyx Necklace with Pearl"; "You Bring Out Butch in Me"; "Marinate"; "Deep Winter"; "Marriage in the Building of the Tower"; "Being Green"; "Summer Lessons"; "How to get there"; "Gamebag Dream"; "Aquamarine"; "Heart"; "Grandma Rajut"
Critical Interpretation
Siobhan Senier writes about Mother/Land in his article "'All This/Is Abenaki Country': Cheryl Savageau Poetic Awikhiganak." Arters discusses the gap in literary scholarship in Native American literature as it continues to "marginalize the New England Native writers in the study of Indigenous American literature as a whole - and therefore in the wider field of American literature" (1). He placed the Savageau poem as part of Abenaki's literary history in these cracks, arguing that Savageau's poetry is "traceable all the way back to the precontact birchbark map called awikhiganak (2). note the role of Savageau's poem in Mother/Land playing in Native American space mapping, and therefore in the development of the American people, in New England, is very different from the misconception that the Abenaki people have "disappeared" From area (2). Art further demonstrates that Savageau's poetry is very rich in its ability to explore various topics "(Barbie, working-class life, erotic spirits)" from a similarly diverse perspective "(Abenaki, France -Canadian, feminist, daughter, sister) which he says makes Savageau's poetry quite relevant to a wide audience (21).
MichÃÆ'¨le Lacombe in his article "More Than a Place of Hearts: A Meeting Place in Wabanaki Poetry by Cheryl Savageau and Mihku Paul" discusses how the writings of Savageau illustrate Abenaki's traditional concepts of community, family, and kinship as nurtured by oral tradition. He also echoes the idea that Savageau's poems embody a sense of place (134).
Reception
Mother/Land has been praised by Allison Hedge Coke and Craig Womack (Muscogee).
"Mother/Land is restoring the world through the repetition of patterns that women pass to women like a song to their lips.At this family place, where one bargain above Memere's gown, her Mama's hair comb is like brushing bird wings, hiring mother -from -pearl to fill a black hole from his absence leaving the bare buxom hills of a tree. From this childhood where people may wear fallen grass dresses, cut ankles in witchgrass, and peek into the fridge to paint the hummingbirds of moths; -mothers, grandmothers and new descendants, we came to make peace with the crossroads and swallows, rivers and oceans, and they took us home from where we started - the Homeland. "--Allison Hedge Coke
"Cheryl Savageau stared at the rocks of amber, opal, emerald, garnet, sapphire, amethyst, pearl, quartz, peridot, and onyx, recording every change of light and color they cast on old and new love. from as many refraction as possible to one of the richest and most complete New England spiritual topographies ever written.Read who knows that Savageau's earlier life history of those who sanctify and defile his home landscape will be astonished at the poetic summit of an entirely portrait drawn this, hard, for a boy under a drain pipe, whales say to the world, kids slapping, hummingbirds in the fridge, catechists with knives in his teeth, wife spraying breast milk on the breakfast table, woodchuck too. busy for crucifixion, piano baptized with molasses, parakeet gems, Doc Martened drooped grains and lead women around lanta i dance, the erses with fireflies, and everyone, all that came out of the gamebag and into the poetry of Cheryl Savageau. This may be one of the best literary depictions of New England to date, certainly the best to challenge anything new and British about this place. "--Craig S. Womack
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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