On "Strong Male Rain," "Man living on the Rock," and "If I Were Coyote"
I am full Navajo from Sand Springs, Arizona. I am currently in the process of finishing my poetry manuscript. *
Some of the stories I try to tell in poetry relate to the many aspects of the Diné (Navajo) creation stories. My poems tend to take on different layers and use different holy people of the Dine to narrate the stories. I use the modern day setting to create a setting ayone can relate to.
"A Strong Male Rain" tries to show the similarities, rather than the differences between people, places, and things.
"Man Living on the Rock" was written to compare two lives--the life of the real and the unreal. I started with two quoted lines, "don't ever waste a wish," and "tell me how a man should live." Then I tried to imagine the speaker's voice.
"If I Were Coyote" was inspired by a poem I saw that had the line "If I were God." Instead of writing about God, I took one of my own counterpart gods--coyote--and imagined what he would do.
Hershman John, 1998
Revision See a poem evolve here
* Note: Mr. John's first volume of poetry is scheduled for publication in September 2007