The Blue Belly of the World by John Milton (review)

Reviews 247 The Blue Belly of the World. By John Milton. (Vermillion, South Dakota: Spirit Mound Press, 1974. 64 pages. $2.95.) John Milton’s 31 poems illustrated by Lynn Milton are a celebration as they return the reader again and again to the earth and what is happening in it. These poems are excitingly subtle as they move back and forth between the Native American view of the earth as life-birther and receiver and Twentieth-Century Man’s view of earth as world. Another image drifting in and out — sometimes on four or on two legs and then “like a grey ghost” — is the coyote. In Part I, “The Short-Furred Sky,” the poet describes the earth as continuous provider of life and death in his poem, “The Promise of a Place.” Our vision and understanding ought not be confined to a flat view of the earth, he says. “The spokes / of an unseen wheel” can be seen at “the junc­ tion of / wire fences.” And that wheel encompasses Indians whose “bones have floated in old / trees” and fanners who “rest / beneath boulders they could not move.” That wheel circumscribes night and day, “new poets / and old plows” and Indian women stringing beads. Within that wheel, the earth does not break its promise of snow. The poet’s use of the coyote image is more complex than his use of the earth image because the Native American use of Coyote has so many facets. Coyote is both the animal and the man. He is interchangeable in form depending upon the situation. He has also the interchanging characteristics of trickster, teacher, creator, guardian, fool, anti-hero. (See Gary Snyder’s “The Incredible Survival of Coyote,” WAL, IX, 4, 255-272.) If the earth is the symbol for ordered life, Coyote can be the symbol for what Snyder calls “divinely sanctioned lawlessness.” Additionally, he represents more dynamic aspects of the life-force, of the libido or the anima in the human. Milton artfully accomplishes a union of these uses of the coyote with his vision of the coyote as a sufferer who prevails. And if the animal can prevail in a man-made world in which we destroy the earth and each other in various ways, then perhaps we can borrow from brother-coyote and prevail. This is a contemporary view of Coyote as traveler. The blue belly of the coyote is the initial image in “The Short-Furred Sky” poem. It can be seen in half light “at the edge of the hill.” And if one lies beneath the coyote, he can see “the short-furred sky.” He can see until it is dark and the daisies close. The poem’s last line is “blue belly is the world.” Here is an example of the subtle shift mentioned earlier. Liter­ ally, the coyote’s belly is blue at dusk. Literally, the speaker lies beneath the coyote, looking up — but seeing sky. Has the coyote become sky, the male procreator? And has the world become the earth, the female procreator? “The Eagle and the Coyote” is another poem which combines the strength of sky and of earth through the image of an eagle and a coyote standing side by side until nightfall. Paradoxically, the eagle is female and 248 Western American Literature the coyote male. Also, at nightfall the two might be mistaken for a bear and a crow. The eagle is strength, freedom in the sky; the bear is strength and freedom in the earth. The coyote and the crow are both tricksters. In the last two poems of Part I, the coyote is at first ghostly and then the two-footed Coyote Man, the trickster. “Like a grey ghost” Coyote stands sniffing and looking in “Coyote in the New World.” His centuries-old freedom is called to the reader in the image of the coyote’s standing against “the moon of Aztec gods / and Lakota smoke.” But the coyote “fades with fear” at noon, “a nurse curse / anxiety” in his eyes. In his eyes as they see the “new landscape,” the speaker sees the “new gods / walk the grass and dust / confusion / with musky fright.” “Old Two Eyes...