from The Book of Medicines

Painting by J.W. Baker

The Book of Medicines, by Linda Hogan (Coffee House Press, 1993)


The bear is a dark continent
that walks upright
like a man,

says Linda Hogan, and of a mountain lion, she observes,

Her power lived
in a dream of my leaving.
It was the same way
I have looked so many times at others
in clear light
before lowering my eyes
and turning away
from what lives inside those
who have found
two worlds cannot live
inside a single vision.

But it’s way too easy to find such quotes in this book of eminently quotable poems, where concern for the health of the land and the health of people — both whites and Hogan’s own Chickasaw — are closely interwoven.

There is still a little life
left inside this body,
a little wildness here
and mercy
and it is the emptiness
we love, touch, enter in one another
and try to fill.
–”Nothing”

Hogan’s is a wise voice that deserves a much wider audience.