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Another poem from that area.
Poem called "Sonoita."
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I like the Sonoita landscape and it
seemed to fit the poem that was in my mind
since it was sort of a dreamlike poem.
And also, the word Sonoita--
I mean, I tell you my titles are totally arbitrary.
So Sonoita sounded like sonnet to me.
Song, sonnet, Sonoita, something like that.
Anyway so I used it.
An arab stallion dapple in his wild colthood,
a schoolgirl holding to the silver mane,
canter from their stable and spray of trodden soil.
Effortlessly they sail across the shorn foothills,
turning the earth's corner.
Headed for an oasis in a land where all its horses bridles
hang upon the palms.
Tired, her mother waits by adobe stalls.
Shy of words to calm her apprehension,
she has known the gate of passion
and fears the wild herds.
Like an old hired hand, she waits in shadows
for the child who riding and broken in the saddle,
heeds not the love of men, but lives
bejeweled where there are none.
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That's a poem that I like to read a lot in the high schools
and we sort of coordinate it with the kind of assignment,
so Indian students, we found, have been usually
the best poets and are also the best painters.
And I think there will be a day, it's not far from now,
when we're going to see that Indian painting is
going to be the big vogue.
These kids have a very distinctive style
and it comes from a completely different perspective.
In other words, when you tell an American, just
regular white kids, us, to draw a table,
well, we draw the line and the legs.
The top and the legs.
Indians usually will draw it from the top looking down.
And it's just a matter of-- almost everything
has a slight perspective difference.
And so I find it very interesting
that very often these kids who write the poems also
do a lot of the painting.
And I like to--
so I always say, illustrate your poems,
because they come up with some really gorgeous paintings.
And if I was an entrepreneur I guess I would buy them
or something, but I don't.
I just, I just like the idea that they
do it and we're encouraging the BIA at the moment to--
you know how schools are, you never
think of-- like here, the Poetry Center,
this guy from the art department came in the other day
and he said, well, he didn't even know it was here.
Well, we just never think of the arts in combined terms,
but I'm trying to get the BIA to,
whenever they do have writing classes,
to also work art classes and around it.
And there's another program funded by Title 1
where a girl rides around with a van filled
with all sorts of art supplies, and baskets, weaving material,
and paintings and stuff.
And we run into each other very often at the different schools.
So I'm going to be coordinating with her
so we'll see what comes out.
The Institute of Indian Arts had a very beautiful book
where the kids wrote little poems,
and little doesn't mean, not good.
They're just-- they tend to write in shorter forms,
but really excellent imagery and then did some illustrations
with it and it's just a gorgeous book.