Letter to the Editor and: Jehanne Dubrow Replies

I am writing in regard to a comment in Jehanne Dubrow's book review of Peggy Shumaker's Underground Rivers that was published in Prairie Schooner's summer 2005 issue. Having read Prairie Schooner for several years, I was surprised by Dubrow's statement on page 188 where Dubrow refers to Shumaker's "lovely villanelle, which relies on the pared-down diction of a Native American voice." I find this kind of commentary problematic in that it assumes there is only one Native American voice, that is, as "pared down." Pared-down? Not only does Dubrow diminish Shumaker's individual voice as a poet, but she also dismisses Shumaker's tribal affiliation by homogenizing all Native American tribes into one essentialized mass, with a voice that has only one dimension. In doing so, she dangerously perpetuates the racial myth of the Indian savage.

In his essay, "Marginal and Submarginal," Vine Deloria Jr. writes: "Today Indian students have a choice of many careers, and it is sometimes inconceivable how complex higher education has become with its many specialties, fields, and subfields. It is no longer possible to create categories that accurately describe what Indian scholars are studying and where they will make the greatest contribution." Deloria's point in this excerpt is to suggest that indigenous students and scholars need to dismantle the colonial dichotomy of civilization and savagery.

I write to you personally to ask that Prairie Schooner consider its diverse readership and continue to recognize the influence that literature has on public perception. As such, I hope you will share this letter with Prairie Schooner staff, contributors, and reviewers.

The University of Nebraska serves many Native students of various tribal affiliations and our literary journal, Prairie Schooner, should help decolonize, or at least to respect, this academy's Native peers. Though the journal's cover depicts the statues of Lewis and Clark as hooded ghosts of our colonial past, the reality is that colonialism, to all of our detriment, still waves its flag right in our faces.

Jehanne Dubrow replies:

I wonder when it was that the adjective "pared-down," a term considered to have positive connotations in the writing of modern and post-modern poetry, was made over into an ethnic slur. My review states, "This lovely villanelle, which relies upon the pared-down diction of a Native American voice, represents a woman's body as earth and a man's as rain: 'a sweaty man, welcome,/ pours his skyful of sorrow inside her/ too soon." That Mr. Gibney reads the perpetuation of "the racial myth of the Indian savage" in my enthusiasm for Peggy Shumaker's villanelle says more about his handling of text than it does about mine. Mr. Gibney criticizes what he supposed my opinion to be, that "there is only one Native American voice." In the villanelle under discussion, the poet uses this incantory, lyric form to assume a persona, and the way she gives voice to that persona is, indeed, only one artistic representation among many.