Review by Denise Low ©2013 Denise Low. Contact for reprint permissions kansaspoetry[at]gmail.com
In The Book of Big Dog Town: Poems and Stories from Aztalan and Around, Jim Stevens explains visionary states as he experiences the
11th century site of Aztalan
in Wisconsin:
One
day I decided I wanted to go across the Crawfish River, to the sacred site on
the bluff. After some time in the glacial kettle there, playing a song on my
flute, I was walking back toward the river. The wind, tailing me, began
replaying my song. All of these things were for me a new way of experiencing
the world. (4)
The ancient city of mounds, where songs take on their own lives, mirrors the arrangements of stars. The poet refers to three earthworks mounds that echo the points of
Orion the Hunter’s belt in “The Hills and the Three Stars.” With this book of
prose and poetry, Stevens completes earth and sky alignments with a third
element—the human voice. This is an important book, one that uses language to
unify the
Stevens writes foremost
about place. The poems and stories reflect on Aztalan and its
surroundings. The poet understands the intangible pull of sites beyond
measurable grids of magnetism. “Wind and Country” begins: “Above the river and
east of the town / He is hearing closely the way of the wind.” This poem
continues to look more deeply into the geography, as he finds, “The path here
is named Keeping Us Whole / Where
spirit hills are calling to the stars.” Indeed, the narrator of this
transcendent experience explains
how a song “opened up the doorway between worlds.” Earth is not a separate
element from the heavens.
The poet uses an easy,
loping cadence in his writings. His dance of words keeps the beat, embellished
with spins and dips along the way. The language is unpretentious and
conversational—until Stevens unfurls a fancy metaphor, like “It is a far place
where only the yellow bird goes / Carries him into this world on a spine of
flowering wings.” The simple “yellow bird” becomes both a winged being and a
blossom.
Most of all, Stevens
is a guide to spiritual history of North America. His experience of family Seneca
traditions adds to the dimensions of the book. He also draws on European American sources like Clayton Eshleman to explain, “’as one sees into a shifting field, there is a desire to see through it’" (Juniper Fuse). His stories reveal how Aztalan is similar to Cahokia, a large mound
city outside St. Louis. This book resonates with Alice Azure’s similar renewal
of Cahokia, Games of Transformation
(Albatross Press, 2011). Both books challenge the erasure of human experience
before European settlement of the Americas. The Book of Big Dog Town also connects Aztalan’s earthen pyramids
to related Mexican and Central American sites, where stars also mirror the arrangements
of people’s dwellings. Stevens references Younger Brother Obsidian, a Mayan
Daykeeper of the 9th century: “And here is my friend the stealer of
time / With his father rain all that is left in the words / “With his
rivulet-faced aunts who wait ? Among sparkling tinges of broken glass / For the
sake of Younger Brother Obsidian . . . .” A Seneca longhouse is not distant from the continuity of Guatemalan waterways, winds, birds, and trees: “And
there comes the hermit thrush of the clouds / Stately in her deep grieving
resolve / Just when the soul-tree is in its proper longhouse / And the cedar
wind is rattling the walls / So tightly bound until the light shines through.”
Light shines through this entire book as Stevens illustrates how history is
an ongoing legacy, not lost on a static timeline.
©2013 Denise Low. Contact for reprint permissions kansaspoetry[at]gmail.com
