James Thomas Stevens Selected Works

Borrowing from the North American Jesuit Relations and the Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses of the Jesuits in China, (dis)Orient focuses on the obsession of charting. Charting the lakes and rivers of lands on both sides of the Bering Strait, charting the borders of our own containers. Mapping as a means of showing greatness or inferiority. Do we map our borders based on what is reported or echoed back by others? "If the savages are to be believed.../...and we even traced out from their reports a map of the whole of the new country." An exploration of borders, based partially on the ideas of psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, on history, but mostly of the self experienced though the other.

dis(Orient) was later collected into A Bridge Dead in the Water.

This collection by Mohawk poet, James Thomas Stevens explores the effects of colonization on either side of the Bering Strait—China and North America. Three long poems focus on mapping, post-colonial emergencies and propaganda, while the short poems are personal experiences in China and Native America. Includes "dis(Orient)," "The Mutual Life," and "Alphabets of Letters."

Bulle (bubble) / Chimere (chimera) represents some of the most arresting of Stevens's deeply sensuous and intricately crafted poetry—a return to "the personal" that offers an acute reminder of the heights and breadths of intensity that human love can attain.

The title, Combing the Snakes from His Hair, alludes to an Iroquois story of healing. Atatarho, the Onondaga leader, had a crooked body and a head covered with snakes. In order to achieve peace, Atatarho had to be healed: his mind straightened, his body straightened, the snakes combed from his hair. Similarly, during the writing of these poems, Stevens experienced a healing, a setting straight of his life and a setting straight of the record.

The collection, written between 1993 and 1999, is comprised of five sections. The opening section, written as a way to explore new natural surroundings, is accompanied by the author's drawings of prairie flora. The second section is a series of love poems. The third section examines the relationship between European music and Native American music and observes that both should be viewed equally as expressive of each culture. And the fourth section consists of short poems—translations, if you will—of Iroquois stories and songs. The final section consists of a long poem studying the effects of colonization coupled with an emotional contemplation of nature and one's place within it. It is concerned with language—who controls it, who possesses it, and how it is used by the colonizer to erase indigenous cultures.