West End Press
Publishing Voices
from the Margins
- NEW
- BOOKS
- ABOUT
Let us then declare a holiday
For ourselves, and make a parade
that begins
With Columbus’ victims and continues
Even to our grandchildren who will
be named
In their honor.
Because isn’t it true that even the summer
Grass here in this land whispers
those names,
And every creek has accepted the responsibility
Of singing those names? And nothing
can stop
The wind from howling those names around
The corners of the school.
Why else would be birds sing
So much sweeter here than in other lands?
—from “Columbus Day”
Jimmie Durham’s subversive account of Columbus’s ill-omened voyage developed a lively underground reputation after its publication in 1983 and was republished to coincide with the events of the quincentennial celebration in 1992. The book features his poems, prose, drawings, and excerpts from his speeches, giving an overview of his place in his society, world society, time, and history.
“The mystical drawings complement these hard-edged, bitter, humorous, and always honest poems, which at their best are, as the writer intended, as eloquent as the sound of a rattlesnake.”
— Peter Matthiessen
Jimmie Durham is a Cherokee Indian poet and painter who has been among other things a delegate of the International Indian Treaty Council to the United Nations and an active member of the American Indian Movement.
For the last twenty years he has lived primarily in Mexico where he continues to work as a writer and artist.