american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

EQUIVOCAL AGENCY 109
one that sees pop cultural mythology’s (in the guise of Buffalo Bill’s)
vision of evolution as the death of the Indian as savage and the advent
of his proper place—in the museum where other extinct, once wild
creatures now reside. Alexie’s parody of this vision of (d)evolution
ends in that beacon of high culture—the museum—where cultures are
supposedly preserved. However, this museum actually represents the
deaths and exploitation of indigenous cultures.
In Alexie’s usage of magic realism, Buffalo Bill does not miraculously
enter the reservation in the late twentieth century; instead, he
never left. He has always been there to keep Indians in their proper
place in American culture. Buffalo Bill is still the celebrated
hero, Indians the primitive savages prone to alcoholism and selfdestruction;
both are popular images that mask the realities of colonization.
Therefore, in “Evolution,” the Indians strangely give back
to whites the trappings of popular culture (TVs and VCRs) even as
they struggle with the alcohol introduced to them by whites. Alexie’s
Indians are thus trapped in a colonized space wherein they have
compromised identities and little self-determination.
“Evolution” is a satirical narrative with a dystopian, parodic voice.
Unlike the two Simic poems that employ strange narratives and ironic
voices, “Evolution” is more accessible and entertaining and thus more
deceptive. John Newton points out that “poetry-shy undergraduates
respond to Alexie’s work” with “instant recognition” due to its “readerfriendly
textures and ambivalent good humor” (414), features that
would no doubt disappoint Palmer and the Language poets. But as
Newton suggests, something more nebulous is at work in
“Evolution,” which is nonetheless subtle and indirect. Newton calls
Alexie’s collection of parodic strategies vis-à-vis white American culture
“autoethnographic parody”; in this strategy Alexie works to
reclaim the Indian’s stereotyped, white-constructed image. Newton
points out that Alexie “cannot set the terms of this narrative
exchange” because it necessarily takes place in the images, terms, and
significations of the dominant white culture (427). Indeed,
“Evolution” works as a type of gallows humor, but not an empty one.
It takes on the “most vicious and demeaning” (Newton 416) stereotypes
held by the dominant culture and attempts to re-imagine them
as part of genocide styled as “evolution.” But the question remains:
does this poetic voice exploit those negative images for poetic gain?
I believe, finally, that Alexie’s poem documents exploitation and
appropriation, but does not traffic in them itself.
If Alexie reconsiders the “evolution” of Indians and white
North Americans in the previous poem, in “A Reconsideration of