What the Chickadee Knows
Modern poems conceived first in Anishinaabemowin and then in English.
Margaret Noodin explains in the preface of her new poetry collection, What the Chickadee Knows (Gijigijigaaneshiinh Gikendaan), "Whether we hear giji-giji-gaane-shii-shii or chick-a-dee-dee-dee depends on how we have been taught to listen. Our world is shaped by the sounds around us and the filter we use to turn thoughts into words. The lines and images here were conceived first in Anishinaabemowin and then in English. They are an attempt to hear and describe the world according to an Anishinaabe paradigm." The book is concerned with nature, history, tradition, and relationships, and these poems illuminate the vital place of the author's tribe both in the past and within the contemporary world.
What the Chickadee Knows is a gesture toward a future that includes Anishinaabemowin and other indigenous languages seeing growth and revitalization. This bilingual collection includes Anishinaabemowin and English, with the poems mirroring one another on facing pages. In the first part, "What We Notice" (E-Maaminonendamang), Noodin introduces a series of seasonal poems that invoke Anishinaabe science and philosophy. The second part, "History" (Gaa Ezhiwebag), offers nuanced contemporary views of Anishinaabe history. The poems build in urgency, from observations of the natural world and human connection to poems centered in powerful grief and remembrance for events spanning from the Sandy Lake Tragedy of 1850, which resulted in the deaths of more than four hundred Ojibwe people, to the Standing Rock water crisis of 2016, which resulted in the prosecution of Native protesters and, ultimately, the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline on sacred land.
The intent of What the Chickadee Knows is to create a record of the contemporary Anishinaabe worldview as it is situated between the traditions of the past and as it contributes to the innovation needed for survival into the future. Readers of poetry with an interest in world languages and indigenous voices will need this book.
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Margaret Noodin is professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also serves as the associate dean of the Humanities and director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education. She is the author of Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature and Weweni (Wayne State University Press, 2015), a collection of bilingual poems in Anishinaabemowin and English.
an exquisite bilingual journey of languages and observations "situated between the traditions of the past and the innovation needed for survival into the future."
--Naomi Shihab Nye "The New York Times Magazine"'Recognize yourselves in shared water, ' writes Margaret Noodin in 'Apenimonodan' ('Trust') as the poems of What the Chickadee Knows open into an Anishinaabemowin world, asking us to listen, to be present in 'what we notice.' What I notice--what I delight in--is the music of poetry--visual and aural--how the sheer sound of words and each poem's visual lyricism creates meaning enough for connection. Poetry is music; poetry is the spirit of the senses sounded into life by breath. With these generous and rapt poems, written in Anishinaabemowin and translated by the author herself into English, Noodin gives us an extraordinary gift: an invitation into the illumination of language.
--Jennifer Elise FoersterFinding such profound inspiration is a literary gift and it warms my heart to know that her daughter did the cover art.
-- "The Boswellians: Blog for Boswell Book Company"There are many moments of beauty and insight to encounter.
--Jon M. Sweeney "Spirituality and Practice"The poems here beautifully center Anishinaabe philosophy and language as a future, not just a past. They are also a joy to read.
--Sarah Neilson "Literary Hub"
