House of Grace, House of Blood Volume 96
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A01=Denise Low
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archival poetry
Author_Denise Low
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DC
Category=DSC
Category=JBSL
Category=JFSL9
COP=United States
delaware indians
Delivery_Pre-order
documentary poetry
docupoetics
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
eq_society-politics
generational trauma
genocide
gnadenhutten massacre
hybrid poetry
Language_English
lenape history
PA=Not yet available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Forthcoming
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780816553587
- Dimensions: 178 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 Oct 2024
- Publisher: University of Arizona Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Intertwining a lyrical voice with historical texts, poet Denise Low brings fresh urgency to the Gnadenhutten Massacre. In 1782, a renegade Pennsylvania militia killed ninety-six pacificist Christian Delawares (Lenapes) in Ohio. Those who escaped, including Indigenous eyewitnesses, relayed their accounts of the atrocity. Like Layli Longsoldier’s Whereas and Simon Ortiz’s from Sand Creek, Low delves into a critical incident of Indigenous peoples’ experiences. Readers will explore with the poet how trauma persists through hundreds of years, and how these peoples have survived and flourished in the subsequent generations.
In a personal poetic treatment of documents, oral tradition, and images, the author, who has “blood ties to both killers and those killed,” embodies the contradictions she unravels. From a haunting first-person perspective, Low’s formally inventive archival poetry combines prose and lyric, interweaving verse with historical voices in a dialogue with the source material. Each poem builds into a larger narrative on American genocide, the ways in which human loss corresponds to ecological destruction, and how intimate knowledge of the past can enact healing.
Ultimately, these poems not only reconstruct an important historical event, but they also put pressure on the gaps, silences, and violence of the archive. Low asks readers to question not only what is remembered, but how history is remembered—and who is forgotten from it. Reflecting on the injustice of the massacre, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh lamented that though “the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus . . . no American ever was punished, not one.” These poems challenge this attempted erasure.
In a personal poetic treatment of documents, oral tradition, and images, the author, who has “blood ties to both killers and those killed,” embodies the contradictions she unravels. From a haunting first-person perspective, Low’s formally inventive archival poetry combines prose and lyric, interweaving verse with historical voices in a dialogue with the source material. Each poem builds into a larger narrative on American genocide, the ways in which human loss corresponds to ecological destruction, and how intimate knowledge of the past can enact healing.
Ultimately, these poems not only reconstruct an important historical event, but they also put pressure on the gaps, silences, and violence of the archive. Low asks readers to question not only what is remembered, but how history is remembered—and who is forgotten from it. Reflecting on the injustice of the massacre, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh lamented that though “the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus . . . no American ever was punished, not one.” These poems challenge this attempted erasure.
Denise Low, former Kansas Poet Laureate, is on the board of Indigenous Nations Poets. Her recent books are The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival, Jigsaw Puzzling and A Casino Bestiary. She taught at Haskell Indian Nations University for twenty-five years.
