Louise Erdrich

Born in 1954, Louise Erdrich is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the author of best-selling novels, volumes of poetry, and children’s books. Erdrich’s father was German American, but she is Native American on her mother’s side and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Her work, which often contains multiple narrators and moves backward and forward in time, concerns the political and social struggles of Native Americans. Erdrich has received the O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, among many other awards. In 2007, she turned down an honorary doctorate from the University of North Dakota in protest of the university’s “Fighting Sioux” mascot; she received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Dartmouth, in 2009.

Captivity

A response to Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, Erdrich’s poem “Captivity” explores a captive’s fear—and misunderstanding—of her captors. The poem is from her collection Jacklight (1991).

He (my captor) gave me a bisquit, which I put in my pocket, and not daring to eat it, buried it under a log, fearing he had put something in it to make me love him.

—From the narrative of the captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, who was taken prisoner by the Wampanoag when Lancaster, Massachusetts, was destroyed, in the year 1676

The stream was swift, and so cold

I thought I would be sliced in two.

But he dragged me from the flood

by the ends of my hair.

5

I had grown to recognize his face.

I could distinguish it from the others.

There were times I feared I understood

his language, which was not human,

and I knelt to pray for strength.

10

We were pursued by God’s agents

or pitch devils, I did not know.

Only that we must march.

Their guns were loaded with swan shot.

I could not suckle and my child’s wail

15

put them in danger.

He had a woman

with teeth black and glittering.

She fed the child milk of acorns.

The forest closed, the light deepened.

20

I told myself that I would starve

before I took food from his hands

but I did not starve.

One night

he killed a deer with a young one in her

25

and gave me to eat of the fawn.

It was so tender,

the bones like the stems of flowers,

that I followed where he took me.

The night was thick. He cut the cord

30

that bound me to the tree.

After that the birds mocked.

Shadows gaped and roared

and the trees flung down

their sharpened lashes.

35

He did not notice God’s wrath.

God blasted fire from half-buried stumps.

I hid my face in my dress, fearing He would burn us all

but this, too, passed.

Rescued, I see no truth in things.

40

My husband drives a thick wedge

through the earth, still it shuts

to him year after year.

My child is fed of the first wheat.

I lay myself to sleep

45

on a Holland-laced pillowbeer.¹

I lay to sleep.

And in the dark I see myself

as I was outside their circle.

They knelt on deerskins, some with sticks,

50

and he led his company in the noise

until I could no longer bear

the thought of how I was.

I stripped a branch

and struck the earth,

55

in time, begging it to open

to admit me

as he was

and feed me honey from the rock.

(1991)