{"id":7439,"date":"2020-08-18T17:07:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T17:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=7439"},"modified":"2020-08-18T17:07:27","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T17:07:27","slug":"tantanka-iyotake-double-epic-of-sitting-bull-a-poem-by-em-schorb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/tantanka-iyotake-double-epic-of-sitting-bull-a-poem-by-em-schorb\/","title":{"rendered":"TANTANKA IYOTAKE. Double Epic Of Sitting Bull. A Poem by EM Schorb."},"content":{"rendered":"
\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\tSioux must have mounts.  Sun-Dreamer,\r\n\t\t\t\tgreatest of all shaman, advised, Go\r\n\t\t\t\tto the horse-rich Crow.\r\n\t\t\t\tUp from Mexico,\r\n\t\tstolen by Comanche,\r\n\t\tpassed north to Utes, Shoshoni,\r\n\t    the best mounts came, finally,\r\n\t\t\t\tto the Crow.\r\n\tSo a hundred Hunkpapa\r\n\twent on the warpath, the\r\n\t\t\t\tSioux seeking Crow\r\n\tin Yellowstone summer,\r\n\t    lariats ready, led by Sitting Bull,\r\n\t\tfinding and making off with many a Crow pony.<\/em>\r\n\r\nFrom French frontiersmen\u2014coup, to touch or to strike the enemy.\r\n\tLet aftercomers slay\r\n\thim:  you are first in honor because first in the fray.\r\nSlow, who,\r\n\tat fourteen, had no other name\u2014he\r\nwas considered deliberate, thoughtful,\r\n\tnot slow\u2014must join the hunting party\u2014\r\n\t\t\t       but out on the trail,\r\n\t\tso his mother could not try to stop him,\r\n\t\t\t\t  would not hold him back and wail\r\n\tas if he were riding to his death.  Deliberately,\r\nSlow must be fast, first, must make coup\r\n\r\n\tPursued! so that along the\r\n\t\t\t\tskyline the rays of rising sun were\r\n\t\t\t\tmade of long wide rare\r\n\t\t\t\tred feathers, each on a spear.\r\n\t\tCrow galloped\u2014Sioux galloped.\r\n\t\tNow Sioux must be intrepid\u2014\r\n\tmust hold the herd!  Winter Rides,\r\n\t\t\t\tthe Crow Chief,\r\n\tsent Sitting Bull a challenge\r\n\tto a duel on the range,\r\n\t\t\t\tjust chief and chief\r\n\tin single combat.  They\r\n\t   knelt, aimed, and fired.  Sioux and Crow prayed.  Both sides\r\n\t      waited for the white cloud to clear.  Winter Rides was dead,<\/em>\r\n\r\nor die now and be done, for \u201cIt is better to lie naked\r\n\tthan to rot on a high\r\n\tscaffold,\u201d an old man who has lived safely, afraid to die,\r\nnow naught\r\n\tbut bent bone and thin loose flesh for the\r\nsun to cook and the crows to eat.  A name\r\n\tmust be earned.  Let the braves mock his war\r\n\t\t\t       lust\u2014who cared?\u2014but he\r\n\t\twould have greatness, and he must begin.\r\n\t\t\t\t  He will not allow anyone in the\r\n\tworld to stop him, not mother nor sisters nor mocking braves\r\n\tnor even father.  And so he caught\r\n\r\n\tSitting Bull\u2019s round shield pierced, the\r\n\t\t\t\tsole of his foot penetrated and\r\n\t\t\t\tbadly mangled, and\r\n\t\t\t\this legendary limp\r\n\t\tacquired for American\r\n\t\thistory.  And now a grand\r\n\t    chief, famous, mighty, un-\r\n\t\t\t\tdefeated,\r\n\twith his every step, he\r\n\treminds all who see\r\n\t\t\t\thow he can spread\r\n\tover the prairie the\r\n\t\tSioux\u2019s high might and exclusive dominion,\r\n\t\tfor there were fewer and fewer bison.  These hunting grounds,<\/em>\r\n\r\nand joined his father\u2019s band, saying, of himself and his pony,\r\n\t\u201cWe are brave and strong, and\r\n\tare going too.\u201d  On his father\u2019s face he saw pride, and\r\n\u201cA brave\r\n\tis a brave when he proves it,\u201d and Slow\r\nhad already killed his first buffalo;\r\n\thad touched a dead foe\u2019s face.  He gave Slow\r\n\t\t\t       his own coup-stick, then\r\n\t\tprayed to the Great Bull Buffalo God\r\n\t\t\t\t  to keep Slow safe in the band\u2014\r\n\tfor who would forgive him Slow\u2019s death?\u2014then willed that Slow be\r\nfirst to send an enemy to his grave.\r\n\r\n\twhich had once belonged to the\r\n\t\t\tCrows, Hidastas, Rees, Shoshonis, and\r\n\t\t\tpoor, dying Mandans,\r\n\t\t\tonce many and grand,\r\n\t\tcould not keep such numbers.\r\n\t\tThe Treaty of Fort Laram\r\n\t    -ie, which held the tribes to peace,\r\n\t\t\tSitting Bull\r\n\tdeclared, must be broken or\r\n\this people starve, and by\r\n\t\t\t1864,\r\n\tall the chiefs who had signed\r\n\t    the Treaty of Fort Laramie with the\r\n\t\tSioux nation were dead, their tribes driven off and hiding,<\/em>\r\n\r\nThen it was hard riding, to where the bubbling, blood-red water\r\n\tof the Missouri river\r\n\tturned brown, and there were the Iroquois, taking from the giver,\r\nbrothers\r\n\tto vultures, stealing their bison\u2014meat,\r\nhoof, and hide\u2014from the hungry Hunkpapa,\r\n\twho would ambush the Iroquois but\r\n\t\t\t       for the gold-painted\r\n\t\tboy, crying, \u201cI am Slow, bravest of the\r\n\t\t\t\t  Hunkpapa,\u201d who charged ahead\r\n\tof his band to make coup on an isolated Iroquois\r\nhunter, alarming the others.\r\n\r\n\tafraid to hunt buffalo\r\n\t\t\t\tat all, Sitting Bull having triumphed.\r\n\t\t\t\t\u201cChief Sitting Bull fed\r\n\t\t\t\tthe nation,\u201d Sioux said,\r\n\t\t\u201con thirty-five thousand\r\n\t\tbison a year.\u201d  \u201cGrandfather,\r\n\tmy children are hungry,\u201d prayed\r\n\t\t\t\tSitting Bull,\r\n\twhen taking aim at a great\r\n\tbull buffalo, \u201cso I\r\n\t\t\t\tmust kill you.  It\r\n\tis what you were made for.\u201d\r\n\t    Then he offered meat to Wakan Tanka,\r\n\t   \tDouble-of-the-Sun, who had given bison their meat.<\/em>\r\n\r\nNow the surprised Iroquois hunters turned in retreat\u2014all but\r\n\tone brave, who stopped, turned about,\r\n\tand drew his bowstring.  But coup! Slow struck him with a shout,\r\nand fame\r\n\twas Slow\u2019s, as other Hunkpapa slew\r\nthe unfortunate brave.  Sitting Bull, Slow\u2019s\r\n\tgreat father, felt his pride overfull\r\n\t\t\t       as the others circled\r\n\t\this son Slow with raised weapons in salute\r\n\t\t\t\t  of his courage in battle.\r\n\tHe must give some away.  He, Returns-Again, now Sitting Bull,\r\nawarded Slow his honored name. <\/pre>\n
Biography<\/strong><\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
E. M. Schorb attended New York University, where he fell in with a group of actors and became a professional actor. During this time, he attended several top-ranking drama schools, which led to industrial films and eventually into sales and business. He has remained in business on and off ever since, but started writing poetry when he was a teenager and has never stopped. His collection, Time and Fevers,<\/em> was a 2007 recipient of an Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing and also won the \u201cWriter\u2019s Digest\u201d Award for Self-Published Books in Poetry. An earlier collection, Murderer’s Day,<\/em> was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press. Other collections include Reflections in a Doubtful I, The Ideologues, The Journey, Manhattan Spleen: Prose Poems, 50 Poems, and The Poor Boy and Other Poems.<\/em><\/p>\n
Schorb’s work has appeared widely in such journals as The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Chicago Review, The Sewanee Review, The American Scholar, and The Hudson Review.<\/p>\n
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2000, his novel, Paradise Square<\/em>, was the winner of the Grand Prize for fiction from the International eBook Award Foundation, and later, A Portable Chaos<\/em> won the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction in 2004.<\/p>\n
Schorb has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the North Carolina Arts Council; grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Carnegie Fund, Robert Rauschenberg & Change, Inc. (for drawings), and The Dramatists Guild, among others. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Society of America.<\/p>\n
PRIZE-WINNING BOOKS
\nBY E.M. SCHORB
\nBooks available at Amazon.com
\n_______________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n
Dates and Dreams<\/em>, Writer\u2019s Digest International Self-
\nPublished Book Award for Poetry, First Prize<\/p>\n
Paradise Square<\/em>, International eBook Award
\nFoundation, Grand Prize, Fiction, Frankfurt Book Fair<\/p>\n
A Portable Chaos<\/em>, The Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction,
\nFirst Prize<\/p>\n
Murderer\u2019s Day<\/em>, Verna Emery Poetry Prize, Purdue
\nUniversity Press<\/p>\n
Time and Fevers<\/em>, The Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry
\nand Writer\u2019s Digest International Self-Published Book
\nAward for Poetry, each First Prize<\/p>\n
and recent finalist in the International Book Awards 2020 again
\nMuddling Through, a Gallimaufry of Light Verse, Prose Poems, Short Plays, Songs, and Cartoons<\/em>
\nHill House New York 978-0-578-60136-6<\/p>\n
 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times<\/a> at Artvilla.com<\/a> ; his publications include
\n 
\nAll the Babble of the Souk<\/em> <\/a>, Cartoon Molecules<\/em>, Next Arrivals<\/em> and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems<\/em>, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande\u00b4s La llave de niebla, as  Key of Mist<\/em> <\/a> and the recently published Tesserae<\/em> <\/a> <\/u>, a translation of Carmen Crespo\u00b4s Teselas.
\n 
\nYou may visit Aquillrelle.com\/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop <\/a>about author.  See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Sioux must have mounts. Sun-Dreamer, greatest of all shaman, advised, Go to the horse-rich Crow. Up from Mexico, stolen by Comanche, passed north to Utes, Shoshoni, the best mounts came, finally, to the Crow. So a hundred Hunkpapa went on the warpath, the Sioux seeking Crow in Yellowstone summer, lariats ready, led by Sitting Bull, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,788,836,808,796,366,754,401,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7439"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7450,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7439\/revisions\/7450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}