Poetry – National Monuments by Heid E. Erdrich

I purchased the book National Monuments by Heid E. Erdrich because it won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry.

What do I like about National Monuments? I like it that she asks a good question, which is “When do the remains of the dead stop being sacred and inviolate, and start being materials for scientists to examine and entrepreneurs to trade?” She writes in the notes at the end:

Because the body has become a location, a site and a text to scholars, what would seem violation of a sacred space (say a temple or shrine) has become a legitimatized and urgent need of study. The rules in place to protect our bodies when we die simply to not apply to anyone who has been dead long enough. That seeming contradiction troubles me and made me want to express my dis-ease learning that an ancestor’s bones have been crushed for testing.

I consider “Dis-ease” a good word for the describing the emotional tone of National Monuments, especially the final section “Discovery: An RSS Feed Series.” When do the remains of the dead stop being sacred and inviolate, and start being materials for scientists to examine and entrepreneurs to trade? Heid E. Erdrich’s answer to her question is “It should be ‘Never,’ even though it isn’t right now.” You might disagree with her answer, but her poems will definitely encourage you to think about your answer to the question. Would you donate your body for scientific research after your death? Erdrich is against the very premise (in the poem “Body Works’). And don’t get Erdrich started on the Bodies exhibit at the Mall of America. She would consider the creators of that exhibit to be desecrators of sacred spaces.

I like it that one doesn’t have to belong to any particular nation (like the Ojibway, to which Erdrich belongs) to appreciate her poetry. That’s because she asks the kind of questions that a poet is supposed to ask. There are some Ojibway themes (“De’an,” “Star Blanket Stories”), but her poetry is more addressed to a general audience.

I like that Erdrich has created some small series of poems about certain characters. One of the blurbs on the back cover says she is having an argument with the poet William Carlos Williams, but it was too much of an inside joke to me. Williams wrote a poem “To Elsie,” and Erdrich wrote a number of poems in National Monuments about various aspects of Elsie’s life. I recalled “Madam to You” by Langston Hughes when I read them. Kennewick Man is another character that inspired a group of poems. I sincerely hope that Erdrich will write a book’s worth of Elsie poems and Kennewick Man poems.

What do I not like about National Monuments? I don’t like that I almost stopped reading after I read the poem “Desecrate,” the exclamation point for the first section “Grave Markers.” Desecrate is a bitter, venom-dripping hate note to Western civilization, describing what it would be like if Western civilization had done to it what was done to the Ojibway and other First Nations. I had just seen the movie “Avatar,” another hate note to Western civilization, and after reading Desecrate, I had my fists up, ready to rip this book a new one. I believe other readers might stop reading after reading Desecrate.

I don’t like the blurb on the back by Robert Warrior:

Heid Erdrich’s new poems are beautiful and brave explorations of the depths of national identities and the real people who live them. These are arguments with historians, archeologists, William Carlos Williams, and the overwhelming, deeply rooted, conflicting myths of what being an American is all about.

While most of these two sentences are true, I grasp that this book is only incidentally concerned with what being an American is all about. Erdrich neither embraces being American nor repudiates being American. It’s not the conversation that National Monuments is about.

I don’t like the faux-Cyrillic lettering for the title, back cover and section title pages. I found it a distraction from the conversation of the poems. Is it a reference to the fallen Soviet Union and its desecrated sacred places?

The things I like about National Monuments are much more significant than the things I don’t like. It was definitely worth the investment. It should also be noted that one of Erdrich’s previous books, The Mother’s Tongue, was a Minnesota Book Award nominee. Her persistence was rewarded. Denise Low-Weso, Poet Laureate of Kansas, wrote a blurb for the book. Perhaps Heid E. Erdrich will be Minnesota’s Poet Laureate one day, the wise grandmother Kookums who we cannot leave.

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