Kenny, Maurice - Carolyn D. Scott (essay date Winter 1983)
Carolyn D. Scott (essay date Winter 1983)
SOURCE: "Baskets of Sweetgrass: Maurice Kenny's Dancing Back Strong the Nation and 'I Am the Sun'," in Studies in American Indian Literature, Vol. 7, No. 1, Winter, 1983, pp. 8-13.
[In the following essay, Scott examines Kenny's focus on nature and concern with community and tradition in Dancing Back Strong the Nation and "I Am the Sun."]
Maurice Kenny's slim volume of only 23 poems, Dancing Back Strong the Nation, now out of print, has its origins, fittingly, in the sacred Longhouse of the Mohawk Nation, oldest in the country, resting on the borders of Canada and the U.S. A second printing adds six more poems, but preserves essentially the same mood and tone of the first. Both volumes move with the mystery of poetry especially found in Mohawk dance and drum rhythms which Kenny believes to be quintessential to his work.
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