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REGIONAL WRITERS
IN REVIEW

"Luminaries of the Humble"

Reviewed by Kent Chadwick
The Free Press

Luminaries of the Humble
by Elizabeth Woody
The University of Arizona Press, 1994 - 128 pages

Sahaptin-speaking people say of their history along the Chewana and on its plateaus: "Tee-cha-meengsh-mee sin-wit na-me ad-wa-ta-man-wit." Poet Elizabeth Woody holds tightly to such phrases from her people's ancient tongue, yet she also translates them for readers of English.

Sahaptin is the language of the Warm Springs, the Yakama, the Umatilla, the Walla Walla, the Wanapum and the Wyampum nations, "practitioners of words so strong they cannot be written." Those peoples have lived along the Chewana, the "river of veracity," the great Columbia, for 14,000 years, gathering together to fish and trade at Wyam (Celilo Falls) in celebration of the annual nusoox (the return of the salmon). Their history says, "At the time of Creation the Creator placed us in this land and gave us the voice of this land and that is our law."

But on March 10, 1957 the gates of the Dalles Dam were closed and the Falls were drowned. Descendants of those nations find that their inheritance has been obscured. Elizabeth Woody is seeking to uncover, celebrate and translate that inheritance in her strongest book to date, Luminaries of the Humble.

In her award-winning first book of poems, Hand into Stone (Contact II Press, 1988), Woody declared that now, "There is no myth, only prophecy is left." Early in Luminaries of the Humble, Woody reiterates that declaration; myth is lost and even the trickster himself, Speelyay (Coyote), is asleep. She then turns to writing prophecy into many of these poems.

Woody's words describe the native street priest's "inflamed soliloquy" that can't endure. She hears a friend say: Think of me "holding a shovel / pausing from self-burial / to sing." The stolen bones on exhibit in anthropology museums lie in an oblivion where "there is a crumble of spirit." A brother foresees that the murderer he seeks will be brought down, damned.

Woody laments the "Angels of Law" that must "pull out the children like teeth" from the alcoholic family. She tries to read ideograms of relapse and recovery from collections of burnt matches. She prophesies that the prosperity around us is an illusion created by the cutting down of origins, that our emotional detachment from the land "etches into destruction," that "we suffocate in the backwater of decadence / and fractious contempt," both indigenous peoples and the rest of us.

Only two hundred years from the discovery, dear Chewana

the unfolding of unwritten prophecy,

a Great River is fragmentary holiness.
-from "The English in the Daughter of a Wasco/Sahaptin Woman, Spoken in the Absence of Her Mother's True Language"

The title of that last poem shows Woody's awareness of her greatest challenge as a prophetic poet - she must write in English. Her family background is Warm Springs, Wasco, Yakama, Pit River and Navajo; she is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon; she grew up hearing her grandparents speak Sahaptin and Wasco. But those tongues are lost to her, except for their sounds, their rhythms, and a few precious phrases.

It is the enemy's language you twist.

Your grandmother says you cannot

make a mouth

big enough for it.

Or remain long enough from conversion

to properly

talk Earth's message.

-from "Tongue"

Woody works hard to twist English well. In her third book, Seven Hands, Seven Hearts (Eighth Mountain Press), which was also published in 1994, she tells fun family stories, writes clear, lyrical poems, and includes the full text of Hand into Stone. But in Luminaries of the Humble she is trying to capture the voice of her land itself. She is writing English poetry with echoes of her ancient languages' rhythms and sounds. Listen to these lines:

The palms of water pummel against the smoothness.

Retracts their own allegorical muttering.

Force. Touch. Retreat. Touch. Retreat.

Stirs up dialogue, interrupts the consonance.

-from "The Ebb of Foolish Endeavors"

Woody accomplishes her difficult purpose in many lines and stanzas, and in some full poems. She is pushing her language towards a hard, crystalline clarity. Sometimes the lines are merely rocky. Sometimes the poems are murky, not clear. But when she succeeds, as in the poem "The Invisible Dress," she gives her readers a gift of graceful and challenging prophecy. The invisible dress is tanned deer hide; it is made of water; it is soaked in brains and scraped with a rib bone; it is lighted with symbols; it is patterned with song; it is given in dream; it is about survival.

...Infinite in this dress, together,

brought back through hardship and inexplicable turmoil,

we emerge, again, wearing this dress, necessary

and radiantly fearless.

-from "The Invisible Dress"

Living With Crass Commercialism

Reviewed by Andy Bauck

Marketing Madness:
A Survival Guide for a Consumer Society
By Michael F. Jacobson and Laurie Ann Mazur
Westview Press, 1995 -$18.95, 260 pages

"There are almost no limits or boundaries to commercialism, except perhaps beer commercials interrupting presidential speeches or billboards by the Grand Canyon or in front of Mount Rushmore." -From the Foreword by Ralph Nader

Have you ever been annoyed by telemarketers interrupting your peace to beg you to change long-distance companies, or grown dizzy from being constantly surrounded by advertising? Part exposŽ and part activist manual, Marketing Madness is a highly critical examination of the many ways corporations invade our private lives and public institutions. Written by Laurie Ann Mazur and Michael Jacobson, a co-founder of the Center for the Study of Commercialism, the book also includes a foreword by Ralph Nader.

Through the course of the book, the authors build a persuasive case against the excesses of the advertising industry and, more generally, against corporate control of our public and private institutions and the creation of a climate which encourages overconsumption. Exhaustively documented and footnoted, Marketing Madness uses countless examples and illustrations to make its points subtly and maintain readability.

Using school buses to sell 7-Up

Although Marketing Madness thoroughly covers well-discussed topics such as TV advertising, junk mail, and marketing geared towards children, it also includes in-depth consideration of many less publicized but equally important issues. For example, Jacobson and Mazur's well-documented discussion of the alcohol and tobacco industry tactic of using charitable donations to buy silence from civic groups and improve their corporate image (frequently spending far more to publicize a donation than they gave in the first place) is sure to be eye-opening even to the most jaded corporate critic. Other chapters cover the degrading ways advertising presents women, and the corporate trend of making consumers feel good about spending by using social issues as a selling point.

A section of the first chapter devoted to advertisers' invasion of public schools is particularly revealing. According to Jacobson and Mazur, 40 percent of the nation's high school students view 30-second television ads beamed directly into classrooms by satellite each morning, courtesy of Channel One. Studies cited by the authors have found that aside from its limited academic utility, students think the products advertised on Channel One must be good for them because they are shown in school. More discreetly, corporations have found their way directly into lesson plans by offering cash-strapped school districts free curricula which are frequently little more than commercials given legitimacy because they are presented by teachers. Examples include a Georgia-Pacific activities kit which defends clear-cutting while expressing the company's concern for the environment; a poster from the National Soft Drink Association which seeks to establish soda pop as the nutritional equivalent of fresh fruits; and a video produced by Exxon lauding the company's success in cleaning up after the disastrous Valdez tanker wreck.

Given particular attention are the many ways commercialism covertly intrudes on our lives via methods like product placement in movies, now standard fare in virtually all Hollywood productions. Other deceptive tactics include program-length infomercials styled as talk-shows and the print media's equivalent, the advertorial - advertising disguised as editorial copy. With the advent of the video news release (VNR), advertisers have broken the barrier between commercials and news. Many TV news shows consider these corporate-produced publicity videos as news fit to broadcast; a McDonald's VNR on the introduction of the McLean Deluxe was seen by approximately 22 million Americans, at a fraction of the cost of reaching a similar number in 30-second ad spots.

But Marketing Madness provides inspiration and solutions as well as cause for cynicism and despair. Attention is given to the ways individuals have confronted commercialism, and most chapters include a sidebar entitled, "What You Can Do," with useful addresses, phone numbers and suggestions for activism like pushing your school board to adopt guidelines on the use of corporate materials.

Now that virtually all broadcast and print media are owned by just a handful of corporations, the daunting task of trying to find reliable sources of information has grown even more difficult. Protect yourself: Read this book, and subscribe to The Free Press.

A Worker Writes About Work

Reviewed by Robert Pavlik
Free Press contributor

How to Tell When You're Tired:
A Brief Examination of Work
By Reg Theriault
W.W. Norton and Company, 1995 188 pages, hardbound, $18.00

Despite the huge body of literature on labor history, there are relatively few titles that relate to the work itself. A few notable examples come to mind: Studs Terkel's compilation of interviews with a broad cross-section of the labor force, entitled Working (1972); Antler's epic poem, Factory (1980); and Bertoldt Brecht's ode to the common man, A Worker Reads History. Beyond that, and a handful of titles published by the now-defunct Singlejack Press, one is hard pressed to read anything worthwhile about the experience of working.

Reg Theriault has gone a long way to remedy that situation. This is a book about work by a man who has done it for most of his life. He has been a fruit tramp in the Western states, from Texas to Washington, working at a feverish pitch in packing sheds. He later signed up as a longshoreman on the San Francisco waterfront where he worked for more than three decades. All the while he has been an insightful observer of the human condition. Theriault is a writer of clarity and grace, with a lot to say to his fellow workers and to their overseers. His book delves into history, with an insightful examination of the time-and-motion studies began in the 1920's (and workers' response), to the impact of technology on his chosen occupations. He also hopes to explode a few myths about the workforce that are commonly bandied about by management and some rank-and-file alike, using his own experiences as well as published studies to make his point.

Many of his stories exhibit a wry sense of humor and a keen eye for the human condition. Some of them will anger you, as anyone who has worked under less than ideal conditions has gotten angry - with the boss, the work, the pace, the long hours, the tedium, the lousy pay. The end result, however, is one of enlightenment, the feeling that the reader has really learned something by reading this book. It might be about life on the waterfront as a longshoreman; or as a migrant farm worker; it could be a new insight into what workers really think and feel about their lives and occupations. It all depends on the reader's perspective, their own life and history, and what they bring to the book before they delve into its pages. That is what makes this book so valuable - that it has something for a broad range of readers, for after all, we are all workers, white or blue collar, management or rank-and-file.

Robert Pavlik is an environmental planner with the California Department of Transportation. He lives and works in San Luis Obispo.

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