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In the realm of writing, poems hold a special kind of power.
M. L. Smoker |
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Mandy Broaddus is a member of the Assiniboine and Sioux Native American tribes. She graduated from Pepperdine University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, and the University of Montana, where she earned her Master in Fine Arts degree. She has also attended the University of Colorado and UCLA. At the University of Montana, she was a recipient of the Richard Hugo Scholarship, and during her time at UCLA, she was awarded the Hannah Yellow Thunder Scholarship. Formerly a teacher and administrator on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana, she is now employed by the Office of Public Instruction in Helena, Montana. Her primary focus is Indian Student Academics and Achievement. The Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana is the place of her birth.
Mandy Broaddus, penname M. L. Smoker, is a contemporary published poet who began writing poetry while in her twenties to help deal with her mother's death. In her first collection of poems “Another Attempt at Rescue,” she writes of the struggles of assimilation into mainstream society. The poet M. L. Smoker, through her poetry, reveals the “constant pull of the tribe, the reservation, even when she is far from home.”
This is a struggle many an immigrant had to face. The same is true of Native-Americans, whose land was taken from them for the price of cheap costume jewelry, or a treaty written in very small print. They found themselves foreigners in their own land. In her poem "Letter to Richard Hugo," Smoker addresses the late poet with a love letter to her native land after a foray in the larger world: "Dick: The reservoir on my end of the state is great/ for fishing. Some of the banks are tall and jagged, others/ are more patient,/ taking their time as they slope into/ rocky beaches/... I almost/ thought of not returning to finish the writing program/ you began with your own severe desire for language, But I/ did. And now I am at the end. Already though, I'll admit/ to you, I'm thinking of home. I have been this whole/time."
Broaddus, who writes under the pen name "M.L. Smoker," said she draws her themes from the local landscape, family relationships and her Assiniboine and Sioux heritage.
"A lot of my poems kind of belong to this area of the state," she said.
Broaddus wrote the book's title poem, "Another Attempt at Rescue," as America headed toward war with Iraq.
"I was thinking about that and I was thinking about this reservation and other reservations and problems we encounter and how we work through them individually and as a community," she said.
~~ http://kurtcoleeidsvig.com/Smoker.html
Frequently prose-like but artfully and carefully crafted, the poems in this debut book are heartfelt, without being sentimental, and always painfully honest.
~~ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBX/is_5_39/ai_n15390357
Borrowing Blue
by M. L. Smoker
I’m not the painter here. I leave that to you, but blue
is the color of my father’s camping cup, left tonight
on the Formica counter. This pen I am writing with.
And the beaded moccasins and belt I danced in
before my mother died.
My grandmother had made these for her as a child –
spelling out in blue beads on blue bead
each of our names, our collective history
in an invisible pattern only we would recognize.
Not the blue of Montana sky either,
not that at all, but the pulse of lake water lapping
at your ankles, the temperature rising
as a storm gathers on the plains.
The push and pull of forgiveness.
I’m already thinking of leaving again.
Did I tell you this? How can I speak of this wind,
how it has no color, no sense,
no guilt. It makes me feel even more lonely
than I would ever let on.
I’m guessing you figured this much already.
(We will never stop missing the, will we,
the parent each of us has lost.)
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I would see
in the paintings if I were to visit you.
I like to think there would be some kind of end
to the blue, a visual end to what is never
adequate: blue flame, blue ovary,
blue lung. See how easily we fail?
How can we believe that our secrets are in good hands –
yours resting at the bottom of Flathead Lake, mind held
in a small leather suitcase beneath the stairs.
I have not worn those moccasins or that belt for over
six years now. We should both be ashamed.
Look at us. Look, as the grey fog
settles into your streets outside, how the near-white
canvases wait. You almost didn’t notice again.
Just like I almost didn’t notice the wind
dying down for evening.
So yes, let’s call it Montana blue, the vanishing point.
Maybe this is the real reason I have never learned
to trust in color. How can you take back
the kind of blue you’ve been dreaming of—trust
it will make something unhappen—
if it is the same blue you’re made of.
Subsurface
by M. L. Smoker
Any map is confusing by design, useless. The few
remaining antelope taste ruin in the watershed long
before anyone thinks of eggshells fractured in the boiling
pan. We are bound to such places, ankle to barbed wire,
wrist to the halo of sky moving farther and farther
north. (No one remembers when they last saw the
preacher and his wife who clung to the wire cutters with
abalone knuckles.) How can we rest when all night long,
just a few miles toward the border, an invisible god’s
hand keeps the iron hammers going, violent birds
snatching up the last of the liquid grain. Jaws clench in
sleep as the Morse code of machine taps sets the clocks
to an hour when our tongues have vanished and we
must beg with our eyes for another drop. Men we have
never seen before, their fingertips marked permanently
by spoiled silver ink, wait patiently as we grow new arms
and reach for their pens again.
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Poetic offerings for poetic souls:
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monty31802
As always Larry , you have put together a fine Newsletter worty of reading.
Monty
Thank you for your continued support Monty.
Larry
JudithJean France 
Going to have to file this away , for a concentrating day. So much good information.
Very inspiring.
Thank you Judith. There is always much to learn by visiting the port of cnoto. She is not only an accomplished poet and writer, but a patient teacher as well.
Allen Harriet
okay am not scared now but i got some poems with the photo when you read them but i have not resented any cause i do not have any one to help or listen to my photo discription of the poem like aids,one eight moments and others
Hello ebba
I am not sure which edition of the newsletter you were responding to, but I just wanted to encourage you. It is very scary to present your poems for others to read and review, but it is much better than hiding them in a shoebox under the bed. There are many people here at Writing.com who will be helpful and encouraging. I recommend you join some of the groups like Simply Positive or the Angel Army - there are other groups that will also be beneficial, but these are the only ones I can think of at the moment. In these groups, you will find people who will support and encourage you in your writing.
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Poetry: October 08, 2008 Issue [#2645]
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