Jacklight by Louise Erdrich
"Jacklight" is the opening poem in Louise Erdrich's first poetry collection, exploring complex themes of gender and cultural relations, particularly between men and women and between white and Indigenous cultures. The poem utilizes the Chippewa language, highlighting the dual meaning of a word that refers both to flirting and hunting, thereby intertwining the dynamics of sexual interactions with the predatory nature of hunting. The title refers to the artificial light used in nocturnal hunting, which serves as a metaphor for the exploitative tendencies of colonization experienced by Native peoples.
Erdrich creates a vivid atmosphere through her use of sound and structure, depicting animals venturing from their hiding places despite the presence of hunters. This imagery suggests a deep-rooted curiosity and vulnerability, while simultaneously confronting the aggressive and damaging impacts of male and white dominance. As the poem progresses, animals (representing women or Indigenous people) are compelled to navigate a challenging landscape shaped by their oppressors. The poem culminates in a moment of potential transformation, where the hunters’ tools become inadequate, symbolizing a shift in power dynamics and inviting a deeper understanding of the complexities inherent in the interactions between cultures and genders. Ultimately, Erdrich's work encourages readers to embrace the intricacies of these relationships and the rich emotional landscapes found within her poetry.
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Jacklight by Louise Erdrich
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1984 (collected in Jacklight, 1984)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“Jacklight,” the opening and title poem in Erdrich’s first book of verse, is a haunting dramatization of male-female and of white-Indian relations. The poem begins with an epigraph citing that “the same Chippewa word is used both for flirting and for hunting game,” so that the encounter between hunters and animals enacted in the poem is also an allegory for sexual gamesmanship between men and women. The title refers to an artificial light, such as a flashlight, used in hunting or fishing at night. This detail, along with a number of others, suggests that the poem is also an allegory of an encounter between white and Indian cultures. Erdrich does not indicate whether the male hunters in the poem are white or Indian, but in either case their equipment and character traits clearly suggest aggressive and exploitative aspects of white culture.
The poem begins not with the hunters going into the woods, but with the animals coming out—perhaps because of their curiosity, flirtatiousness, or trusting openness:
We have come to the edge of the woods,
In these lines and throughout the poem, Erdrich’s use of assonance and consonance (such as “Out of brown” and “knotted twigs”) and of parallel syntax (such as the repetition of “out of”) creates a charged atmosphere that suggests repeated, ritualistic behavior.
The harsh assaultiveness of males and of white culture is portrayed in the beams of the jacklights, which “clenched to a fist of light that pointed,/ searched out, divided us.” The perverse power of this jacklight, in contrast with the powers of nature, is such that the animals (or females, or Indians) are compelled into separating from their group. Although the animals in the poem smell many repulsive aspects of the hunters (“the raw steel of their gun barrels,” “their tongues of sour barley,” “the itch underneath the caked guts on their clothes”), they do not retreat. Erdrich seems to be suggesting that women (if they want to have husbands) and Indians (if they want to avoid total destruction by the advancing white culture) have no choice but to deal with such brutishness.
In the last two stanzas, however, the animals declare that it is time for some concessions:
We have come here too long.
For the male who is in search of a female, or the white in confrontation with an Indian, or the reader who may be white or male and about to enter the world of a female Indian poet, there must be a willingness to deal with complexities and mysteries for which their “equipment” or preconceptions are inadequate. Yet Erdrich’s readers may also be assured that though “the woods” of her poetry may seem “deep” and at times “lightless,” they always contain authentic rewards of feeling and experience.
Bibliography
Bruchac, Joseph. “Whatever Is Really Yours: An Interview with Louise Erdrich.” In Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets. Tucson: Sun Tracks and University of Arizona Press, 1987.
Coltelli, Laura. “Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris.” In Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Erdrich, Louise. “Where I Ought to Be: A Writer’s Sense of Place.” The New York Times Book Review 91 (July 28, 1985): 1, 23-24.
Erdrich, Louise. “The Writing Life: How a Writer’s Study Became a Thing with Feathers.” The Washington Post Book World, February 15, 2004, 13.
Hafen, P. Jane. Reading Louise Erdrich’s “Love Medicine.” Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 2003.
Meadows, Susannah. “North Dakota Rhapsody.” Newsweek 141, no. 8 (2003): 54.
Rifkind, Donna. “Natural Woman.” The Washington Post Book World, September 4, 2005, 5.
Sarris, Greg, et al., eds. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Louise Erdrich. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2004.
Stookey, Loreena Laura. Louise Erdrich: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.