ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 provides a close reading of Linda Hogan's poems inspired by animals from her first poetic volume, Calling Myself Home (1978). It argues that recollections of the larger-than-human community of the writer's Oklahoma childhood, in combination with the politically intense climate of the decade, were instrumental in turning her back to tradition. The animal losses she mourns in Calling Myself Home are numerous and embrace turtles, frogs, fish, birds, coyotes, and the rich insect world. Dreaming them back, the poet wishes to revive the tribal past along with the animals, to wake her people up from the sleep of colonial brokenness to a life of renewal and resurgence. Drawing on the lessons learned from Oklahoma animals, Hogan receives consolation and hope from the locusts’ emergence from their old skin and the toads’ hibernation in preparation for the life-giving rain, while crows and coyotes provide her with visions of survivance under conditions of coloniality. All in all, colonization and decolonization are depicted as interspecies endeavors, and the return of the old ways hinges on a renewed awareness of relationality with and responsibility for the nonhuman world.
