Free Downloads

Where Clouds Are Formed (Sun Tracks)

Ofelia Zepeda is a Native American poet who possesses a kind of double vision. She sees the contemporary world through her own highly observant eyes and, at the same time, through the eyes of her Tohono O’odham ancestors. Seeing this way infuses her poetry with a resonance and depth that makes it a delight to read—and re-read. Zepeda is as clear-eyed about the past as she is about the present. She recalls waiting for the school bus on a cold morning inside her father’s truck, listening to the sounds of the engine, the windshield wipers, and the “soft rain on the hood.” She remembers celebrating Mass on the “cold dirt floor of the Winter Solstice.” In the present, she sees both the frustration and the humor in a woman she observes trying to eat pancakes with one hand while her other resides in a cast: “Watching her, I realize eating pancakes is a two-handed job.” Whatever she sees, she filters through her second set of eyes, which keep the past always present. She tells of traveling to Waw Giwulig, the most sacred mountain of the Tohono O’odham, to ask for blessings—and forgiveness. She writes that one should always bring music to the mountains, “so they are generous with the summer rains.” And, still, “the scent of burning wood / holds the strongest memory. / Mesquite, cedar, piñon, juniper, . . . / we catch the scent of burning wood; / we are brought home.” It is a joy to see the world afresh through her eyes.

Series: Sun Tracks (Book 63)

Paperback: 96 pages

Publisher: University of Arizona Press (September 15, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0816527792

ISBN-13: 978-0816527793

Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.3 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,253,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #79 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States > Native American #916 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Women Authors #111031 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States

Ofelia Zepeda offers another collection that reveals once again the cultural and creative genius that earned her a MacArthur Award. Unlike many contemporary Native American poets and writers, Zepeda mixes English and her native tongue, Tohono 'O'odham, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in present day Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. In addition to being the author of a number of books of poetry, Zepeda has also written a fine language learning texts for her native language, one which I personally have used for many years in my courses in linguistics at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Anyone interested in the Native American experience, the American Southwest, or the art of poetry itself should take the time to read this, her latest work. It can unlock a whole new way of looking at the world we all live in and share.

Zepeda’s poems bring serenity. In “Mogollon Rim,” she writes: “That light that we shared / left us that day. / I don’t know how it left, I just know it did. / I have gone searching for it. / I look around the rim of this edge of the world and wonder. / Did it leave on the wing of a hawk?”And her poems can startle: “Lately, I’ve been craving dirt. / I long to see how it / lies on freshly turned fields, / clinging to deep-digging equipment.” All her poems are connect to the earth, to nature, and natural power. Often an entire poem--like the one I’ve just quoted from--seems designed around the contradictions of Native American life confronting a modern technological society. While “Doing electrical wiring in our house / we bore holes into adobe walls; / rivers of dry dirt begin to flow.”In many of her poems, she has lines from her native Tohono O’odham language—further evidence to me, a Euro-American, that Native people, people indigenous to this land, must work hard to retain every bit of their culture. As other poets have shown—whether Native American, Welsh, or Irish--language is specific. For example, Waw Giwulig is a sacred mountain, and through Zepeda’s poetry, I can “see” that mountain. The reader can also feel what the Native person feels: “We stand below the mountain and look upward.” But Zepeda is not talking about the modern Anglo-American tourist speeding along I-25 looking up a Pikes Peak, for example, knowing there’s a cog railway to the top. Zepeda is writing about sacred space—not a commercial corridor. Through these poems, the reader can experience that the people and their culture bring sacred feelings and thoughts to her homeland.I’m not sure if I bought this book from or from Moby Dickens bookstore in Taos, many years ago; but I had the good luck to hear Ofelia Zepeda read in person at a college in Santa Fe.

Where Clouds Are Formed (Sun Tracks) Big Book of Backing Tracks: 200 High-Quality Play-Along Tracks in All Styles Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process Bill of Rights: with Writings that Formed Its Foundation (Little Books of Wisdom) Agates of Lake Superior: Stunning Varieties and How They Are Formed Blue Horses Rush In: Poems and Stories (Sun Tracks) Bone Dance: New and Selected Poems, 1965-1993 (Sun Tracks) Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay (Sun Tracks) Winning the Dust Bowl (Sun Tracks) Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems (Sun Tracks) Raven Eye (Sun Tracks) A Radiant Curve: Poems and Stories (Sun Tracks) From the Belly of My Beauty (Sun Tracks) Luminaries of the Humble (Sun Tracks) Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (Sun Tracks) Earthquake Weather: Poems (Sun Tracks) Jump at the Sun: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Kwanzaa! - Holiday Classics (Jump at the Sun Holiday Classics) Sun Up, Sun Down (Voyager/Hbj Book) Sun Up, Sun Down: The Story of Day and Night (Science Works)