Louise Erdrich: A Wonderful Poet

           Louise Erdrich is a poet and writer whose mother is Chippewa Indian and father is German.  She grew up in South Dakota on a reservation where her parents both taught at a school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Now in her early 50s, she was one of the first women to graduate from Dartmouth College where she focused on Native American Studies.  It’s not surprising, then, that she writes about Native American culture, specifically regarding contemporary issues.  I have had the privilege of teaching her short story “The Red Convertible,” one of the pieces included in her book Love Medicine.  Other notable books of hers include The Beet Queen and The Plague of Doves, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
          I had the opportunity to visit her bookstore in Minneapolis (Birchbark Books), which happens to be in my sister’s neighborhood!  It was charming and has a wonderful collection, with a café attached.  In one corner of her store sat an old, ornate wooden confessional booth, paying homage (she says) to her Catholic upbringing.  I guess it’s to be used how customers see fit!  On another wall I saw this poem written by her.  I liked it so much that I wrote the title down and looked it up as soon as I got home.  Here it is:

           Sweet Apples

Life will break you.

Nobody can protect you from that,

and living alone won’t either,

for solitude will also break you

with its yearning.

You have to love. You have to feel.

It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart.

You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken,

or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near,

let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples

falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.         

                                                    

                                             - Louise Erdrich

To see a short interview of Erdrich with Bill Moyers where she reads another great poem, check out this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaedpQmh8Go

For life is what you make it.  So make it good!