Old Testament Indian

A new book on Job came in the mail today, and what a book! Poet Diane Glancy's Island of the Innocent: A Consideration of the Book of Job is a book-length engagement with Job, refracted through Glancy's experience as a Cherokee and the Job-like history of Native Americans. She gave a "craft talk" on Job and the Cherokee ballad tradition for Poets House just last night - or would have, had technical difficulties not intervened.

But students in my class had already heard Glancy talking about the book. In the alternate reality in which everything were not shut down, she would in fact have visited our class last week! Instead she kindly agreed to a recorded zoom conversation last Friday, which was immensely enjoyable. An edited set of excerpts from the conversation, expertly stitched together by one of my teaching assistants, was one of the course materials assigned to our students this week, along with a selection of poems from the book chosen for us by the author.

And in lieu of taking attendance, I asked students to select some lines from Island of the Innocent that affected them and tell us why on a google.doc. So many insights! Doubtless many of the students also delighted in seeing Glancy's language refracted in so many ways.

What about the book itself? Above are its two prefaces, explanations of the project - one which, we learned, extends back years, even decades - and of the title. She told us she often drives long distances listening to audiobooks, including the Bible, across the prairie, the Book of Job from early on a favorite. (William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job, too, have accompanied her for decades - the text assigned to students along with Glancy's.) As ideas come to her - like wind turbines on a hill in the distance - she jots them down, and some end up in poems. Also from early on she felt compelled to bring Jobs wife's view to speech, giving her a remarkable voice, and a name: Jehora (which spellcheck corrects to Jehova!). Here are two of the shorter poems.

It's a magnificent effort, moving through many genres and moods. The "fissures" Glancy finds in the Book of Job as she reads (listens) and considers it open up exquisite worlds of loss and care, speechlessness and song, lament and, also, faith. So grateful to have been able to share it with my class, and to see them, too, respond to it.