They looks at us as we look upon the trees, slow but full of longevity. Our confinement to the ground elicits pity. We are slow and lumbering, our language is deep and muddy. “I realize that birds see in a completely different way than we humans do. You can tell she’s not just a viewer of life, but thoughtfully enters into it, through the following passage about snow buntings. These gems of writing alone make Tagaq’s book unique and worthy of reading. Nothing can stop the cacophony of gluttony and procreation about to ensue.” We can smell the footprints of last fall and the new decomposition of all who perished in the grips of winter.”Īnd only someone who has grown up in the North, with Tagaq’s poetic insight, could write that “winter always wins, the sun scoffs. In the spring you smell last fall’s death and this year’s growth…. The green lichen smells different from the black. Take this description of the coming of warmer weather: “Lichen smells sweet. Split Tooth is a work that lends itself to such oral storytelling: the first 100 or so pages of Split Tooth describe a young girl’s childhood in what is now Nunavut with poetic writing and poetry, which are just waiting to be read aloud.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |