Native American Poetry -- "Zombies" and "Passive Voices"

Passive Voice

Laura Da’

I use a trick to teach students
how to avoid passive voice.

Circle the verbs.
Imagine inserting “by zombies”
after each one.

Have the words been claimed
by the flesh-hungry undead?
If so, passive voice.

I wonder if these
sixth graders will recollect,
on summer vacation,
as they stretch their legs
on the way home
from Yellowstone or Yosemite
and the byway’s historical marker
beckons them to the
site of an Indian village—

Where trouble was brewing.
Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter.
Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred.
Where most were women and children.

Riveted bramble of passive verbs
etched in wood—
stripped hands
breaking up from the dry ground
to pinch the meat
of their young red tongues.

– "Passive Voice" from Tributaries by Laura Da,’2015.

As we English instructors well know, in general we tend to prefer the use of the active voice. That is when a subject does an action to an object. APA format stresses using the active voice to make it clear to the reader who is taking action in the sentence. Therefore, English gives preference to the active voice, making it easier for the reader to understand the message.

The passive voice is used when we want to emphasize the action (the verb) and the object of a sentence rather than subject. This means that the subject is either less important than the action itself or that we don’t know who or what the subject is.

Consider these contrasting examples:

Passive: Napa Valley is known for its excellent wines.

Active: (Many people) know Napa Valley for its excellent wines.

Passive: Twenty civilians were killed in the bomb explosion.

Active: (Someone) killed twenty civilians in the bomb explosion.

In her poem “Passive Voice,” Laura Da’ recounts a sixth-grade grammar lesson on detecting the use of passive voice by inserting the phrase “by zombies” after each verb. The poem was inspired by her research into the use of language when describing mass atrocities and “how often they’re are marked by passive voice where nobody is held accountable, even through the grammar of how these events are memorialized,” she said.

In this manner, Da' constructs an interactive poem – a simple exercise in English usage and a powerful statement on historical accountability. As readers perform her grammatical “trick,” Da' forces them to confront the subject of the despicable actions of the past. She closes the poem with the powerful images of passive hands “stripped” of liability “pinching the meat of young red tongues.” These “zombies” – “the flesh-hungry undead” – continue to gorge on the young lifeblood of American Natives.

A poet and a public-school teacher, Laura Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. A member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, she received a Native American Arts and Cultures Fellowship. Da’ has also been a Made at Hugo House fellow and a Jack Straw fellow. She lives in Newcastle, Washington, with her husband and son.

When Da' started at the Institute of American Indian Arts, she says she had “an idea that she wanted to be involved in museum studies,” but then she met poet Arthur Sze, who was an instructor at the school and “a really incredible poet.” Inspired by his work, Da' recounts …

“I was 17 and in college and that’s when I started writing poetry. I changed majors almost instantly … I really like the ambiguity of poetry and I also hate to be told what to do, ever. So poetry is really appealing to me.”

As a Native, Da' sees no borders and claims she wished everyone could see through these eyes. Of her perspective, Laura Da' says ...

“ I think about my First Nations relatives to the north and our relatives from south of these man-made borders in what is known as México. I think about the caravan of relatives traveling north, the voter suppression of Indigenous people in North Dakota and of our Black relatives in Georgia, and the heavy history of a country that has weaponized words in so many unspeakable ways.

“These times where my heart struggles to speak are when I need poetry the most.”

As a Shawnee poet, Da' claims she struggles with language – the English that America force-fed down her ancestors’ throats during assimilation and the Boarding School Era. She says she struggles to reclaim the language of her indigenous ancestors as she tries to learn words in her mother tongues.

“To walk a parallel path through life as a citizen of many nations …

[and] to discover a route that allows to maintain curiosity, dignity, and identity.

For me, this has been poetry.”

– Laura Da’