10/24/2023
Via Native American Youth and Family Center
"On this day in 1939, poet and scholar of Native American Literature, Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo), was born. Allen championed Native American culture through poems & essays & editing collections of traditional stories.(Fun fact: Allen received her BA and MFA from the University of Oregon.)
As a special treat, enjoy Paula’s poem entitled “Hoop Dance” below:
It’s hard to enter
Circling clockwise and counter
Clockwise moving no
Regard for time, metrics
Irrelevant to this dance
Where pain is the prime number
And soft stepping feet
Praise water from the skies.
I have seen the face of triumph
The winding line stare down all moves to descreation: guts not cut from arms, fingers joined to minds, together Sky and Water
One dancing one
Circle of a thousand turning lines
Beyond the mark of gears -
Out of time, out of
Time, out
Of time.
"
On this day in 1939, poet and scholar of Native American Literature, Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo), was born. Allen championed Native American culture through poems & essays & editing collections of traditional stories.(Fun fact: Allen received her BA and MFA from the University of Oregon.)
As a special treat, enjoy Paula’s poem entitled “Hoop Dance” below:
It’s hard to enter
Circling clockwise and counter
Clockwise moving no
Regard for time, metrics
Irrelevant to this dance
Where pain is the prime number
And soft stepping feet
Praise water from the skies.
I have seen the face of triumph
The winding line stare down all moves to descreation: guts not cut from arms, fingers joined to minds, together Sky and Water
One dancing one
Circle of a thousand turning lines
Beyond the mark of gears -
Out of time, out of
Time, out
Of time.
