The Feathered Heart

by Mark Turcotte

Overview

This revised and expanded edition of The Feathered Heart, Mark Turcotte's celebrated collection of Native American poetry, brings traditional oral culture to print. Torn, painful, vibrant, and full of hope, his poetry weaves together the multilayered and textured fabric of contemporary Native American urban and rural existence. Appropriately, each poem in The Feathered Heart possesses a deeply lyrical quality. Raw emotion echoes in Turcotte's voice, in his verse, in the things he sees. "Ten Thousand Thousand Bones," for example, "a poem about the desecration of Native American burial sites and objects by archeologists," is dedicated "to an ancient woman taken from the Earth near New Lenox, Illinois in the winter 1993/94."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628952148
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	05/31/1998
Series:	American Indian Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band Anishinaabe) was named Illinois Poet Laureate 2025-29. He spent his earliest years on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation and in the migrant camps of the western United States. Later, he grew up in and around Lansing, Michigan. He was the winner of the First Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic Poetry Award. Turcotte is author of The Feathered Heart; Songs of Our Ancestors; a chapbook, Road Noise; a bilingual collection, Le Chant de la Route; and ExplodingChippewas. His work has appeared in many national and international literary journals and is included in the new and first-ever Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. Turcotte was the recipient of a 2001-2002 Lannan Foundation Literary Completion Grant. He lives in Chicago, where he is distinguished Writer-In-Residence at DePaul University. 

Table of Contents

Contents 

Introduction 

The Eye Shakes 

Horse and Cradle 

Tiny Warriors 

Flies Buzzing 

True Sign 

Indian Boys 

Room Still Full of Death 

Father's Dust 

Window Glass 

Unshadow 

Sky Breathes Sky 

Flying With the Wind 

Horse Dance 

Recognize Stepfather 

And Betty Jean 

Under Gray Gods 

Folded Down 

Animal Shadows 

Indio 

Leads You To Water 

The Boy Dances 

Angels We 

Hands 

This Wind 

The Flower On 

Feather 

Wedding 

Amber On Opal 

Rain Rain 

Chippewa Hitch Hike 

Arrow, Humming 

Motherdrum 

Ten Thousand Thousand Bones 

Brother River Dreams Cyrus Calls For His Pony 

Last Drink 

Half Blood 

Song for the Endless Others

 The Poets Coming 

Growler 

Winter 

Foreign Shore