Debra Magpie Earling - Perma Red - 2003

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North Dakota Quarterly

Volume 70, Number 2 Spring 2003

Contents

Donald Junkins 5 Red Point Journal (poems)

Kevin Stein 21 Upon Blowing Our Chance to Meetthe Poet Laureate, Who's Probably a

Nice Guy and Valentine's DayBoxing at the Madison County Jail(poems)

Teresa R. Funke 27 The Summer of '79

Jacob M. Appel 36 The Wish (story)

D. E. Steward 48 Octobro

Karen A. Babine 56 Kilrnainham

DuWayne Bowen 63 Three Seneca Tales: The Devil; ThePower Line; and The Blind Manand the Deaf Man

Roger Mitchell 69 There WeAre (poem)

Chard deNiord 71 Catch; The Crippling Field; andSighting (poems)

Chris Fink 75 Heartshot (story)

Peter Dellolio 83 Hitchcock and Kafka: ExpressionistThemes in Strangers on a Train

Cara Chamberlain 102 Koto: With DidgeridooAccompaniment

Kip Zegers 107 Collected Poems of George Oppen (ASea Change: Books that Mattered)

Michael Salcman I I I The Clock Made of Confetti (poem)


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Paula K . Speck 1 1 2 Read Me

Alison J auss 1 1 7 Belongings (poem)

Shannon Lakanen 1 1 8 Latching On

Erin Flanagan 1 2 7 The Last Girlfriend (story)

Robert Vivian 1 4 0 Shadows Moving Porch- Wise

Katharine Gregg 1 4 5 Saturday Evening, De Saint-Louis(poem)

Daneen Wardrop 1 4 7 The Mercy of Stagelight and What IsTold Before the One-Note (poems)

Thomas Matchie 1 5 1 Miracles at Little No Horse: LouiseErdrich's Answer to ShermanAlexie's Reservation Blues

Reviews

Scott Lowe 1 6 3 David L. Wilson and Zack Bowen,Science and Literature: Bridging theTwo Cultures

Jill Barnum 1 6 5 Pamela Painter, The Long and Shortof It and Liesel Litzenberger, NowYou Love Me

J ames McKenzie 1 6 8 Gary Paul Nabhan, The Desert SmellsLike Rain: A Naturalist in 0' odhamCountry

Thomas Matchie 1 7 2 Debra Magpie Earling, Perma Red

Robert W. Lewis 1 7 5 Robert Si lberman and WayneGudmundson, The Promise of Water:The Garrison Diversion Project

Editor's Notes 1 7 9

Contributors 1 8 2


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Debra Magpie Earling, Penna Red, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002.Pp. vii i + 296, $24.95 hb.

Penna Red, twenty years in the making, is Debra Magpie Earling's firstat tempt at long fiction, though excerpts of the work-in-progress appearedas early as 1993. In the end the novel's 296 pages represent less than halfof the original manuscript, cut because editors found it too long and toobrutal. Earling asserts that Louise White Elk, the novel's protagonist, ismodeled on the horrendous story of an aunt struggling to survive povertyand abuse on a Flathead Indian reservation in Montana in the 1940s. Butin the process of revision Earling seems to have modified that story whileremaining true to her aunt's legacy. Basic to the novel is a love story, andperhaps the title is symbolic of the permanent but fiery relationshipbetween Louise White Elk and Baptiste Yellow Knife, a mystic rooted in"old traditions" and spiteful of anything related to the white man. Hispowers, inherited from his mother, Dirty Swallow, captivate Louise frombeginning to end, in spite of infidelity and rejection and mutual abuse.The romantic ending, where Louise and Baptiste are in the process ofcoming together, may be a tradeoff for Earling's not making the novel toodark, wherein neither of the protagonists would have survived. But thenovel works and, in spite of limitations, it deserves to be numberedamong the works of major contemporary Native American writers.

There is no doubt that Earling, who teaches at the University ofMontana in Missoula, learned much from other leading Native authors,including James Welch, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie. Some crit-ics even tie her love story to D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love. Amongthe factors that set Earling apart, however, are her poetic sensibility, heruse of sensory detail, and the unique way in which she develops hernotion of love medicine, that is, that deep, subconscious basis for a rela-tionship between individuals that somehow transcends even betrayal. Onthe opening page of the novel these three qualities seem to coalesce. HereBaptiste , in the presence of the young Louise,

... blew a fine powder in her face and told her she would disappear.She sneezed until her nose bled, and Baptiste gave her his handker-chief. She had to lie down on the school floor and tilt back her headand even then it wouldn't stop. She felt he had opened the river toher heart. (3)

Like Lawrence in Women in Love, Earling examines the psychic relation-ship between independent lovers in sexually vibrant ways, but Earling'snotion of love is rooted less in Freudian psychology than in the mysticalpowers peculiar to Native cultures, and she is not interested as isLawrence in the homoerotic. For Earling, Baptiste like his mother has

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so we know that "the river" that Baptiste had "opened to her heart" as a childis still flowing. Their future, however, is left to the imagination of the reader.

Thomas MatchieNorth Dakota State University

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Documents

Debra Magpie Earling - Perma Red - 2003