N. Scott Momaday: "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

In their own way, poems teach the reader.  Frequently they teach the reader something about the reader, sometimes about the subject of the poem, and sometimes about poetry itself.  Some poems are relatively straightforward in that one can get an idea of what the poem is about early on and finds no surprises when one reaches the end.  Others?  Sometimes one has an idea of the poem and suddenly one line changes the way one views the poem and frequently forces one to go back and read it again.  Robert Frost does that, regularly, and so regularly that I now read his poems and wait for the turn near the end. 

This is one of those poems that at the end suddenly produces a surprise. It is by N. Scott Momaday, and  I thought I knew what the poem was about, but that line near the end changed my view of the poem.


The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star 
I am the cold of the dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things

You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive

-- N. Scott Momaday --
from In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems


What do you think?  Is there a line that changed your idea about the poem?  Did you go back and read it again?  Do you think this is a major or a minor change?   Does it add something or take away something or does it really make no difference to you? 

N. Scott Momaday: The Bear

Words are names.  To write a poem is to practice a naming ceremony.

              These figures moving in my rhyme,
              Who are they?  Death, and Death's dog, time.     

And to confer a name is to confer being.  We perceive existence by means of words and names.  To this or that vague, potential thing, I will give a name, and it will exist thereafter, and its existence will be clearly perceived.  The name enables me to see it.  I can call it by its name, and I can see it for what it is.

-- N. Scott Momaday --


The Bear

    What ruse of vision,
escarping the wall of leaves,
    rending incision
into countless surfaces,

    would cull and color
his somnolence, whose old age
    has outworn valor,
all but the fact of courage?

    Seen, he does not come,
move, but seems forever there,
    dimensionless, dumb,
in the windless noon's hot glare.

    More scarred than others
these years since the trap maimed him,
    pain slants his withers,
drawing up the crooked limb.

    Then he is gone, whole,
without urgency, from sight,
    as buzzards control,
imperceptibly, their flight.
 

The quotation and poem are from
-- N. Scott Momaday --
In the Presence of the Sun:  Stories and  Poems



About the Author:
"N. Scott Momaday is a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, and storyteller.  He resides in the American Southwest, and he is Regents Professor of the Humanities at the University of Arizona (in Tucson).  Among his numerous awards are the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Premio Letterario Internazionale 'Mondello.'  He is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He walks long distances, and he rides an Appaloosa mare named 'Ma'am.'  At his best he cooks.  He is justly famous for a recipe named 'The Washita Crossing Soup,' the ingredients of which are, in his words, 'simple, sacred, and secret.'   He is a bear."

Taken from the back cover:
In the Presence of the Sun:  Stories and Poems is a collection of poems, stories (obviously), paintings,  and illustrations by N. Scott Momaday.  They represent thirty years of work, from 1961 to 1991.  "Momaday's voice is ancestral and contemporary, profoundly American and genuinely universal.  Here, at his best, is a truly distinguished poet, storyteller, and artist.