April 28: Resolution 2
Martha
Layli Long Soldier
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(Today’s poem is shared as an image, and includes a transcript/description of the poem as alt text. If you’re unable to see it, you can also find it transcribed below.)
I was lucky enough to see Layli Long Soldier give a reading this year; she's quite charming and a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. This is one of her poems in response to the US government's quiet and tepid resolution apologizing to Native peoples for the harm it's caused. (Read more in this damning excerpt: "Whereas".)
It's a divisive poem for readers: some love it, some hate it, I think because of its apparent simplicity. Consider the symbolism of the boxed-in square (a reservation?) and how the last line cuts off in the middle of the phrase, like it's been snatched away.
More:
2025: Connor Everywhere But, Adam Falkner
2024: The Mother’s Loathing of Balloons, A.E. Stallings
2023: To Be Alive, Gregory Orr
2022: A Metaphor, J. Estanislao Lopez
2021: Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming, Thomas Lux
2020: What Kind of Times Are These, Adrienne Rich
2019: Conversation with Phillis Wheatley #2, Tiana Clark
2018: Love Poem, Denise Levertov
2017: Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2016: For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young
2015: Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou
2014: when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks
2013: Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth
2012: My Place, Franz Wright
2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry
2010: Love After Love, Derek Walcott
2009: To This May, W.S. Merwin
2008: Father, Ted Kooser
2007: from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell
2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
2005: Dream Song 1, John Berryman
DESCRIPTION: The poem is in the shape of a vertical rectangle, with large amounts of white space.
Text down the left side reads: "I commend and honor Native Peoples for the thousands of years that they have stewarded and protected this land", with "this land" repeated across the bottom line, and scattered randomly throughout the page. A small square sits inside the poem, in the upper left quadrant. The final line of the poem cuts off after the word "this", without "land".