Song of the Oktahutche

Collected Poems

Alexander Posey, Matthew Wynn Sivils

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780803210790
• eBook ISBN: 9780803220492
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Muscogee (Creek) writer and humorist Alexander Posey (1873–1908) lived most of his short but productive life in the Muscogee Nation, in what is now Oklahoma. He was an influential political spokesperson, an advocate for improving conditions in Indian Territory, and one of the most prominent American Indian literary figures of his era. One of Posey's dearest subjects was the Oktahutche River, which he so loved that he gave it voice in his poem, "Song of the Oktahutche." His poetry, drawing from Romantic European and Euro-American influences such as Robert Burns and John Greenleaf Whittier, became a sort of Indian Territory pastoral in which the Greek nymph Echo shares a river with Stechupco, the Tall Man spirit of the Muscogees.
Song of the Oktahutche collects for the first time all of Posey's poetry, which has until now been scattered in various rare volumes, either unpublished or replete with textual errors. His highly regarded poems constitute the largest body of Native poetry from the turn of the twentieth century. Matthew Wynn Sivils draws on extensive archival research to produce a complete, accurate, and meticulously annotated edition of Posey's poetry that will further enrich and personalize the legacy of this remarkable Native author.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Editorial Note
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• [Take my valentine and be]
• The Warrior’s Dream
• [And old or new, can records find]
• Death of the Poets
• Red Man’s Pledge of Peace [circa 1893]
• Red Man’s Pledge of Peace [circa 1898]
• Red Man’s Pledge of Peace [ledger version]
• The Burial of the Alabama Prophet
• Twilight [Eventide]
• [Autumn days—bright days of gold]
• Death of a Window Plant
• O, Oblivion!
• Ye Men of Dawes
• [Did’st thou see the spectral blossoms fall?]
• [Oh, those voices now we hear]
• [Forsooth, thou art so versatile, O Bob!]
• [To allot, or not to allot]
• [For two long days the polar breeze]
• [The picnic’s coming]
• [The whippowill has come]
• [Those bursts of oratory—how they stir the soul!]
• Wildcat Bill
• There’s a Tide
• [In UNCLE SAM’S dominion]
• Lowyna
• The Indian’s Past Olympic
• Cuba Libre
• Callie
• Mother and Baby
• Daisy
• The Squatter’s Fence
• The Conquerors
• Lines to Hall
• To Our Baby, Laughing [To Baby Yahola]
• The Two Clouds
• The Rattler
• June [Midsummer]
• The Idle Breeze
• My Fancy [Fancy]
• Autumn
• [Oh, to loiter where] [A Rhapsody]
• To a Hummingbird
• To the Century Plant
• Verses Written at the Grave of McIntosh
• To the Summer Cloud
• To the Crow
• To a Snowfl ake
• Sea Shells
• The Bluebird
• Coyote
• Distant Music
• Distant Music [early draft]
• Earth’s Lilies and God’s
• Her Beauty
• [I sing but fragments]
• Ingersoll
• Life’s Mystery
• A Picture
• Sequoyah
• To Wahilla Enhotulle (To the South Wind)
• [Upon Love’s sea, our barques shall sail][Drifting Apart]
• What My Soul Would Be
• In the Winter Hills
• The Open Sky
• Sunset
• The Legend of the Red Rose
• My Pearl
• Brook Song
• Prairies of the West
• To Yahola, on His First Birthday
• To a Morning Warbler
• Lowena
• [The Poet’s Song]
• [We take no notice of]
• [Nature’s Blessings]
• Twilight [July 7, 1898]
• June [July 10, 1898]
• The West Wind [Husse Lotka Enhotulle]
• Morning
• The Athlete and the Philosopher
• Eyes of Blue and Brown
• Flowers
• Mount Shasta
• The Dew and the Bird
• The Deer
• Be It My Lot
• When Love Is Dead
• To the Morning Glory
• To an Over-Stylish Miss
• [Farewell, frail leaf]
• The Sunshine of Life
• Gone
• Kate and Lou
• My Hermitage
• What I Ask of Life
• A Glimpse
• The Boston Mountains
• By the River’s Brink
• By the Shore of Life
• Chinkings
• A Common Failing
• A Fable
• Epigrams
• God and the Flying Squirrel (A Creek Legend)
• In Tulledega
• In Vain
• The Inexpressible Thought
• July
• The Man-Catcher
• Meaningless
• The Milky Way
• Miser
• A Vision of June [Narcissus—A Sonnet]
• Narcissus—A Sonnet
• Not Love Always
• On Piney
• Our Deeds [A Simile]
• Pedantry
• Say Something
• September
• A Thin Quilt’s Warmth
• Thoughts
• To a Common Flower
• To a Face Above the Surf
• To a Winter Songster
• To Hall
• To Jim Parkinson
• Trysting [Then and Now]
• Tulledega
• A Vision
• What Profit
• When Molly Blows the Dinner-Horn
• The Arkansas River
• Assured
• Lovingly [The Call of the Wild]
• Limbo [Esapahutche]
• [Every moment I flow]
• Memories
• The Mocking Bird
• Spring in Tulwa Thlocco
• Where the Rivers Meet
• Ode to Sequoyah
• Nightfall [Twilight]
• An Outcast
• Pohalton Lake
• Shelter
• To a Daffodil
• Happy Times for Me an’ Sal
• [What sea-maid’s longings dwell] [To a Sea Shell]
• The Decree
• Song of the Oktahutche
• To a Robin
• Bob White
• The Blue Jay
• Moonlight [In the Moonlit Wood]
• The Haunted Valley
• On the Capture and Imprisonment of Crazy Snake
• The Fall of the Redskin
• Fus Harjo and Old Billy Hell
• Saturday
• The Evening Star
• On Hearing a Redbird Sing
• She Was Obdurate
• What a Snap
• It’s Too Hot
• Alex Posey is Responsible
• A Freedman Rhyme
• The Creek Fullblood
• Arkansaw
• Checotah
• O’Blenness
• Hotgun on the Death of Yadeka Harjo
• Again
• All the While [Let Men Dispute]
• [By the cardinal led aright]
• Come
• The Flower of Tulledega
• For Me
• Frail Beauty
• A Glimpse of Spring
• The Homestead of Empire
• [In that valley country lying east]
• Irene
• On a Marble Medallion of Dante
• On the Hills of Dawn
• On Viewing the Skull and Bones of a Wolf
• Pity
• A Reverie
• The Rural Maid
• ’Tis Sweet
• To My Wife
• To the Indian Meadow Lark
• A Valentine
• A Vision of Rest
• Whence?
• [With him who lives a neighbor to the birds!]
• Appendix
• Bibliography