WHEREAS

“Talent” by Layli Long Soldier (2017)

“Talent” appears in the collection, WHEREAS. Written in four prose blocks, the poem uses first-person voice and no punctuation to create an interior landscape that jumps from image to image while the speaker reckons with killing a goose with a bow and arrow on her “first try” (Line 1).

“38” by Layli Long Soldier (2017)

This poem appears in the first part of the collection, WHEREAS. With grammatical precision, “38” reveals the horror of which language is capable in a series of seemingly dry statements that recall the hanging of 38 Dakota men, ordered by President Abraham Lincoln after the Sioux Uprising in 1862.

“Peace Path” by Heid E. Erdrich (2016)

This poem by Heid E. Erdrich may be read multiple ways: left-to-right, line-for-line, for example, or as two separate vertical columns. The setting of the poem is the North Dakota grasslands. Subjects include histories of tribes of Native Americans’s migration across and removal from the prairies, as well as the history of the grasslands proper.

“Passive Voice” by Laura Da’ (2015)

In this poem, a teacher puts pressure on the English language to help her students recognize the passive voice, and considers whether the lesson will expand into the world and onto their summer vacations, where the language of benign-seeming historical markers institutionally blurs violence.