RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS - The University of North Carolina at ...

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Braithwaite, asks of Christopher Columbus in his long poem The Arrivants whether the
Italian navigator crossed the Atlantic only to ―return to terrors / he had sailed from
before‖ (53). The Old World myths of Cathay and Antillia clouded the ―dis—
/cover[er‘s]‖ perception of the fifteenth century Arawaks and the tropical archipelago. If
Old World ideology violently re-inscribed the region, then Braithwaite asks ―what to do,
man … Put a ban on all marriages? Call / You‘self X‖ (56)? Walcott‘s response to the
ambivalent experience of postcolonial identity is the both/and ―assimilation of the
features of every ancestor‖ (―Muse‖ 36). Walcott‘s expansive hope to embody ―every
ancestor‖ and Snyder‘s biocentric dream of a democracy of ―The People / Standing Tree
People / Flying Bird People / [and] Swimming Sea People‖ (Turtle Island ―Mother
Earth‖ 48) exemplify the bioregional reinhabitation of the New World. The two poets
write for North American membership in bioregional communities in spite of the scars of
colonialism, slavery, modern economic exploitation, and industrial pollution.
Snyder writes about his earliest memories of the Pacific Northwest in 1995 after
the quincentennial of Columbus‘ New World ―dis—/covery,‖ 48 describing the sources
from which he constructs a sense of place:
An elderly Salish Indian gentleman came by our farm once every few months in a
model T truck, selling smoked salmon. ―Who is he?‖ ―He‘s an Indian,‖ my
parents said. . . . He knew better than anyone else I had ever met, where I was.
(Snyder, ―Reinhabitation‖ 184)
The poems and essays collected in Turtle Island revise the continent‘s toponym, from the
legacy of Italian exploration to an ancient Iroquois creation myth. Snyder sets aside his
48 See James Barron‘s 1992 article, ―He‘s the Explorer/Exploiter You Just Have to
Love/Hate.‖