The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by Paula Gunn Allen

Abstract

270 Western American Literature physical and Romantic poetry as well as of the American visionary and mod­ ernist movements, and pioneered the first notable postmodernist poems. Like other books on Roethke, this one considers the influence of psychol­ ogy, mysticism, and other poets; however, here the context is always one of organic growth. A poet himself, Balakian devotes ten pages to the generally ignored influence of Williams, noting that Praise To the End is dedicated to Williams (and to Kenneth Burke) and maintaining that in The Lost Son Roethke found “his own American Grain—a locale, the indigenous source Williams had urged American poets to discover.” Balakian addresses Roethke’s relation to the American West and to the frontier by referring to his “North American Sequence” from The Far Field where the notion of frontier is converted “into a terrain of the soul’sprogress” —one that is “a journey out of the self ... a passage ceaselessly unfolding.” Literally, his frontier is on Puget Sound, “where land and water meet,” and where he “is able to face chaos . . . and return to identify with the things of creation.” In doing so, “Roethke is a poet of the via affirmativa like his bound­ less forefather Whitman.” By way of analysis and discussions of well over one hundred of the poems, consideration of some of the prose, and utilization of other pertinent critical studies, this interpretation of the work as an evolving and organic whole expands the view of previous critics and brings into new focus the achievement of Theodore Roethke. NANCY McCLEERY Tarkio College The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. By Paula Gunn Allen. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. 311 pages, $10.95.) As one studies American Indian traditions and the contemporary litera­ ture which springs from those traditions, it becomes clearer and clearer that too many standard studies have under-described (where they have not totally ignored) the spiritual and cultural roles of women. We are left with bits and pieces which suggest women’s powerful roles: Black Elk Speaks tells us much about the sacred pipe but little about the female spirit, White Buffalo Cow Woman, who brings that pipe. Even Leslie Silko’s Ceremony can be misread: though most of the leading characters are male, they live in a universe carefully balanced between female and male—but also a universe in which the predomi­ nant powers are female. Paula Gunn Allen’s essays live up to their subtitle:Recovering the Femi­ nine in American Indian Traditions. Allen’sperspective isthat ofthe American Southwest, specifically the Keres people of Laguna, where the matrilineal and matrilocal traditions, parts of what she calls the gynocracy, have most fully continued. Thus, her names for the greatest powers are Thought-Woman, Old Woman Spider, the Grandmothers. Reviews 271 That orientation is especially useful in the book’s powerful opening sec­ tion, “The Ways of our Grandmothers,” whose three essays explore female gods in Indian traditions;the historyof Indian women in North America since white contact; and Allen’s own personal life chronicle as an Indian woman. The first two essays also discuss in depth the part played, often deliberately, by Europeans and their descendants in undermining or destroying women’s traditional roles in Indian societies. The Sacred Hoop’s seventeen essays also offer a clear and comprehensive introduction to Indian metaphysical and spiritual beliefs; the title essay is particularly fine,with its emphasis on the harmonious balance necessary among all beings (the balance of female and male isonly one such harmony).In addi­ tion, Allen offers readings of specific traditional materials as well as persuasive readings of work by such Indian writers as Mourning Dove, Leslie Marmon Silko, nila north Sun, Marnie Walsh, Mary Tall Mountain, Wendy Rose, Eliza­ beth Cook-Lynn, Joy Harjo, Roberta Hill Whiteman, Linda Hogan, Carol Lee Sanchez. Male Indian writers are by no means left out; Allen writes equally persuasively of the work of James Welch, N. Scott Momaday, D’Arcy McNickle , Gerald Vizenor and Simon Ortiz. Paula Gunn Allen’sessays join the small number of books aboutAmerican Indians which can be read again and again; as one’s understanding grows, so will what one finds in this...