Song of the Oktahutche

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Song of the Oktahutche

Collected Poems

Alexander Posey
Edited and with an introduction by Matthew Wynn Sivils

288 pages
3 photos

Paperback

December 2008

978-0-8032-2053-9

$30.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

December 2008

978-0-8032-2049-2

$30.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

Muscogee (Creek) writer and humorist Alexander Posey (1873–1908) lived most of his short but productive life in the Muscogee Nation, in what is now Oklahoma. He was an influential political spokesperson, an advocate for improving conditions in Indian Territory, and one of the most prominent American Indian literary figures of his era. One of Posey’s dearest subjects was the Oktahutche River, which he so loved that he gave it voice in his poem, “Song of the Oktahutche.” His poetry, drawing from Romantic European and Euro-American influences such as Robert Burns and John Greenleaf Whittier, became a sort of Indian Territory pastoral in which the Greek nymph Echo shares a river with Stechupco, the Tall Man spirit of the Muscogees.
 
Song of the Oktahutche collects for the first time all of Posey’s poetry, which has until now been scattered in various rare volumes, either unpublished or replete with textual errors. His highly regarded poems constitute the largest body of Native poetry from the turn of the twentieth century. Matthew Wynn Sivils draws on extensive archival research to produce a complete, accurate, and meticulously annotated edition of Posey’s poetry that will further enrich and personalize the legacy of this remarkable Native author.

Author Bio

Matthew Wynn Sivils is an assistant professor of English at Iowa State University. He is the editor of Alexander Posey's Chinnubbie and the Owl: Muscogee (Creek) Stories, Orations, and Oral Traditions (Nebraska 2005).

Praise


"Complete with an excellent introductory essay, annotations, and source notes, as well as the inclusion of multiple versions of some poems and a chronological presentation, this collection will be invaluable to scholars and students alike and would serve as an excellent example of a Native American artistic voice during the Allotment Era, with sufficient scholarly support provided by the editor in order to lead scholars and students toward further study."—Kirby Brown, American Indian Culture and Research Journal

“The most prolific American Indian writer of his time, Posey offers perhaps the best opportunity to study Indian Territory at the turn of the twentieth century and to study him as a writer who found himself committed to both tribal culture and modern America. This study lays the groundwork for a major critical study of Posey as an American Indian literary intellectual.”—Daniel F. Littlefield Jr., author of Alex Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist

“Posey must be one of the great semi-secrets of American literature. This edition helps bring Posey into the limelight, where many readers can at last appreciate his legacy. Besides reprinting the published poems, Song of the Oktahutche is chock-full of previously unpublished gems that deepen the picture of Posey's work. . . . Moreover, by turning to a rich archive of manuscripts, Sivils not only gives us poems we did not have before, but also gives us better versions of many of the poems that were (with dedicated research) already available.”—Robert Dale Parker, author of The Invention of Native American Literature
 
 

Table of Contents

<CT>Contents</CT>

List of Illustrations   000

Editorial Note    000

Acknowledgments   000

Introduction      000

 

Poems

[1] [Take my valentine and be]      000

[2] The Warrior's Dream 000

[3] [And old or new, can records find]    000

[4] Death of the Poets  000

[5] Red Man's Pledge of Peace (Circa 1893)      000

[6] Red Man's Pledge of Peace (Circa 1898)      000

[7] Red Man's Pledge of Peace (Ledger version) 000

[8] The Burial of the Alabama Prophet     000

[9] Twilight [Eventide]       000

[10] [Autumn days--bright days of gold]   000

[11] Death of a Window Plant  000

[12] O, Oblivion!       000

[13] Ye Men of Dawes    000

[14] [Did'st thou see the spectral blossoms fall?]    000

[15] [Oh, those voices now we hear]       000

[16] [Forsooth, thou art so versatile, O Bob!] 000

[17] [To allot, or not to allot]    000

[18] [For two long days the polar breeze]       000

[19] [The picnic's coming]    000

[20] [The whippowill has come]      000

[21] [Those bursts of oratory--how they stir the soul!]     000

[22] Wildcat Bill 000

[23] There's a Tide     000

[24] [In UNCLE SAM'S dominion]      000

[25] Lowyna       000

[26] The Indian's Past Olympic      000

[27] Cuba Libre   000

[28] Callie 000

[29] Mother and Baby    000

[30] Daisy  000

[31] The Squatter's Fence                                    000  

[32] The Conquerors     000

[33] Lines to Hall      000

[34] To Our Baby, Laughing [To Baby Yahola]     000

[35] The Two Clouds     000

[36] The Rattler  000

[37] June [Midsummer]   000

[38] The Idle Breeze    000

[39] My Fancy [Fancy]   000

[40] Autumn 000

[41] [Oh, to loiter where] (A Rhapsody)   000

[42] To a Hummingbird   000

[43] To the Century Plant     000

[44] Verses Written at the Grave of McIntosh    000

[45] To the Summer Cloud      000

[46] To the Crow  000

[47] To a Snowflake     000

[48] Sea Shells   000

[49] The Bluebird 000

[50] Coyote 000

[51] Distant Music      000

[52] Distant Music (early draft)    000

[53] Earth's Lilies and God's 000

[54] Her Beauty   000

[55] [I sing but fragments]   000

[56] Ingersoll    000

[57] Life's Mystery     000

[58] A Picture    000

[59] Sequoyah     000

[60] To Wahilla Enhotulle (To the South Wind)   000

[61] [Upon Love's sea, our barques shall sail] [Drifting Apart]   000

[62] What My Soul Would Be    000

[63] In the Winter Hills      000

[64] The Open Sky 000

[65] Sunset 000

[66] The Legend of the Red Rose     000

[67] My Pearl     000

[68] Brook Song   000

[69] Prairies of the West     000

[70] To Yahola, on His First Birthday     000

[71] To a Morning Warbler     000

[72] Lowena 000

[73] [The Poet's Song] 000

[74] [We take no notice of]   000

[75] [Nature's Blessings]     000

[76] Twilight [July 7, 1898] 000

[77] June [July 10, 1898]     000

[78] The West Wind [Husse Lotka Enhotulle]      000

[79] Morning      000

[80] The Athlete and the Philosopher      000

[81] Eyes of Blue and Brown   000

[82] Flowers      000

[83] Mount Shasta 000

[84] The Dew and the Bird     000

[85] The Deer     000

[86] Be It My Lot 000

[87] When Love is Dead  000

[88] To the Morning Glory     000

[89] To an Over-Stylish Miss  000

[90] [Farewell, frail leaf]   000

[91] The Sunshine of Life     000

[92] Gone   000

[93] Kate and Lou 000

[94] My Hermitage 000

[95] What I Ask of Life 000

[96] A Glimpse    000

[97] The Boston Mountains     000

[98] By the River's Brink     000

[99] By the Shore of Life     000

[100] Chinkings   000

[101] A Common Failing  000

[102] A Fable     000

[103] Epigrams    000

[104] God and the Flying Squirrel (A Creek Legend)    000

[105] In Tulledega      000

[106] In Vain     000

[107] The Inexpressible Thought     000

[108] July  000

[109] The Man-Catcher   000

[110] Meaningless 000

[111] The Milky Way     000

[112] Miser 000

[113] A Vision of June [Narcissus--A Sonnet]    000

[114] Narcissus--A Sonnet     000

[115] Not Love Always   000

[116] On Piney    000

[117] Our Deeds [A Simile]    000

[118] Pendantry   000

[119] Say Something     000

[120] September   000

[121] A Thin Quilt's Warmth   000

[122] Thoughts    000

[123] To a Common Flower      000

[124] To a Face Above the Surf      000

[125] To a Winter Songster    000

[126] To Hall     000

[127] To Jim Parkinson  000

[128] Trysting [Then and Now]       000

[129] Tulledega   000

[130] A Vision    000

[131] What Profit 000

[132] When Molly Blows the Dinner Horn    000

[133] The Arkansas River      000

[134] Assured     000

[135] Lovingly [The Call of the Wild]     000

[136] Limbo [Esapahutche]     000

[137] [Every moment I flow]   000

[138] Memories (Inscribed to my poet friend George Riley Hall)    000

[139] The Mocking Bird  000

[140] Spring in Tulwa Thlocco 000

[141] Where the Rivers Meet   000

[142] Ode to Sequoyah          000 

[143] Nightfall [Twilight]    000

[144] An Outcast  000

[145] Pohalton Lake     000

[146] Shelter     000

[147] To a Daffodil     000

[148] Happy Times for Me an' Sal    000

[149] [What sea-maid's longings dwell] [To a Sea Shell]     000

[150] The Decree  000

[151] Song of the Oktahutche  000

[152] To a Robin  000

[153] Bob White   000

[154] The Blue Jay      000

[155] Moonlight [In the Moonlit Wood]     000

[156] The Haunted Valley      000

[157] On the Capture and Imprisonment of Crazy Snake  000

[158] The Fall of the Redskin (with apologies to Edwin Markham)   000

[159] Fus Harjo and Old Billy Hell  000

[160] Saturday    000

[161] The Evening Star  000

[162] On Hearing a Redbird Sing     000

[163] She Was Obdurate  000

[164] What a Snap 000

[165] It's Too Hot      000

[166] Alex Posey Is Responsible     000

[167] A Freedman Rhyme  000

[168] The Creek Fullblood (with apologies to Edwin Markham)       000

[169] Arkansaw    000

[170] Checotah    000

[171] O'Blenness  000

[172] Hotgun on the Death of Yadeka Harjo 000

[173] Again 000

[174] All the While [Let Men Dispute]     000

[175] [By the cardinal led aright] 000

[176] Come  000

[177] The Flower of Tulledega 000

[178] For Me      000

[179] Frail Beauty      000

[180] A Glimpse of Spring     000

[181] The Homestead of Empire 000

[182] [In that valley country lying east]       000

[183] Irene 000

[184] On a Marble Medallion of Dante      000

[185] On the Hills of Dawn    000

[186] On Viewing the Skull and Bones of a Wolf  000

[187] Pity  000

[188] A Reverie   000

[189] The Rural Maid    000

[190] <AP>Tis Sweet     000

[191] To My Wife  000                     

[192] To the Indian Meadow Lark     000

[193] A Valentine 000

[194] A Vision of Rest  000

[195] Whence? 000

[196] [With him who lives a neighbor to the birds!] 000

 

Appendix: A Ledger of Poems   000

Bibliography      000

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