Flint and Feather (1913) is a collection of the complete poems of
E. Pauline Johnson. Revered as one the foremost Canadian poets of
her time, Johnson was a prolific writer whose works explored her
Mohawk heritage while shedding light on the racism and persecution
faced by indigenous peoples across North America. "The lyrical
verse herein is as a 'Skyward floating feather, / Sailing on summer
air.' And yet that feather may be the eagle plume that crests the
head of a warrior chief; so both flint and feather bear the
hall-mark of my Mohawk blood." So states Johnson in the foreword to
her complete poems, Flint and Feather, a collection that captures
not only her range as a poet in tune with the Romantic tradition,
but her dualistic sense of identity as a woman of Mohawk and
English heritage. Choosing to emphasize the former, Johnson, who
also went by Tekahionwake, her great-grandfather's name, adopts the
persona of an Indian wife who, watching her love depart, wonders
what he will "suffer from the white man's hand." In fear, in anger,
in desperation, she proclaims "By right, by birth we Indians own
these lands, / Though starved, crushed, plundered, lies our nation
low..." In the face of defeat, she offers a poetry in tune with the
"ghost upon the shore," the voices one hears "when the Northern
candles light the Northern sky." Johnson's voice is thus both one
of resistance and mourning, her song one of a land of plains and
rivers, of fields that await the harvest despite the "prying pilot
crow" whose "thieving raids" descend "[a]t husking time." With a
beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript,
this edition of E. Pauline Johnson's Flint and Feather is a classic
of Canadian literature reimagined for modern readers.
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