[Review of] Linda Hogan. Seeing Through the Sun

A Chickasaw of mixed blood who grew up in Oklahoma and now lives in Minnesota, Linda Hogan writes spare poems pulled skin tight over the bones and blood and flesh they contain. She does not exploit her Native American experience to make poems; she does not need to. Her references to the old sky woman, black corn dolls, and evicted grandmothers, who walk wrapped in trade cloth, are integrated into the sense of life which fills her poems; yet the tensions which come from having inherited two distinct traditions are not ignored: In my left pocket a Chickasaw hand rests on the bone of the pelvis. In my right pocket a white hand. Don\u27t worry. It\u27s mine. Girl, I say it\u27s dangerous to be a woman of two countries. You\u27ve got your hands in the dark of two empty pockets