Louise Erdrich is equally adept at poetry and fiction; her debut volume of verse Jacklight and her award-winning novel Love Medicine both appeared in 1984. Many of her poems are dramatic monologues, which allow her to inhabit characters from different eras and backgrounds. Born in Minnesota to a French-Ojibwa mother and German-American father, both of whom taught at an Indian school, Erdrich grew up in North Dakota near Turtle Mountain Reservation, and has credited her culture’s rich tradition of storytelling with her desire to write.
More By This Poet
Windigo
You knew I was coming for you, little one,
when the kettle jumped into the fire.
Towels flapped on the hooks,
and the dog crept off, groaning,
to the deepest part of the woods.
In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up.
Mother...
Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
Home’s the place we head for in our sleep.
Boxcars stumbling north in dreams
don’t wait for us. We catch them on the run.
The rails, old lacerations that we love,
shoot parallel across the face and break
just under Turtle Mountains. Riding scars
you can’t...
I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move
We watched from the house
as the river grew, helpless
and terrible in its unfamiliar body.
Wrestling everything into it,
the water wrapped around trees
until their life-hold was broken.
They went down, one by one,
and the river dragged off their covering.
Nests of the herons, roots...