Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost by Sage Ravenwood (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost by Sage Ravenwood
• Delicia Daniels (bio)

Sage Ravenwood. Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost. Gallaudet University Press (86 pages, $19.95, paperback: ISBN 978-1-95462222-7, ebook: ISBN 978-1-95462223-4).

Introduction

Sage Ravenwood's 2023 publication, Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost catapults a marginalized culture into an active literary spotlight. The collection, divided into six sections, serves as a compelling platform for Ravenwood's advocacy against domestic violence, animal abuse, and s cultural conflicts. Bridging ability poetics, ecopoetics, and documentary poetics through a string of passionate protests, Ravenwood's energetic aesthetics accompanies the high-powered militancy of fellow Indigenous poets Ai, Joy Harjo, and Layli Soldier. This extraordinary collection of poems raises awareness for Indigenous Deaf views often overlooked in public and private spaces. The Deaf community has challenged audist and oralist views for years. Indigenous individuals are often marginalized. The innovative marriage of these two distinct groups through Deaf indigenous artistry intensifies the need to support Ravenwood's poetic wisdom. Select poems are highlighted throughout the sections below.

Section One: "Resonance"

"Resonance" captions unforeseen stages of clarity and fear in domestic relationships. The first poem, "Among the Missing," startles the soul with razor-sharp syntax. Love, an entity that should be attainable, is missing. The absence of this sensitive energy preludes internal struggles that include "lung balloons choking" the persona "out of home." This alarming synergy shifts to "I'm Not the Branch," a poem that [End Page 961] divides regional languages of love into alternate rhetorical worlds. Ravenwood writes:

I hold up a hand as if to wave Middle and ring fingers arrowed down rocking horns with the thumb sticking outWhat remains is supposed to be the ASL sign for loveMy thumb index and pinky touch yoursFingers air kissing in signage Hello, I love youBut you and I are different signs black birds circling

The sign for "love"—"my thumb index and pinky"—visually integrates and interrogates "fingers air kissing" and "black birds circling," candid images that give way to the difficult distance of affection. With an aim to bring Deaf activism to the forefront of the literary canon, Ravenwood normalizes American Sign Language among complex lyrical desires.

Section Two: "Familial Treatise"

"Familial Treatise" blends Indigenous beliefs. "The Weight of Hair" zeroes in on the pedagogy of weaving dismissed traditions into actions only a mother can understand. Ravenwood refuses to maintain a ritual that traumatizes authentic identities, declaring:

When I would braid my hair, A chain traveled the length of My small body. Heat soaked, tying Me to a place and time I didn't belong. My hair wore an ageist impression, native born/old religion.

What better way to strike against an "old religion" that feels oppressive than to cut it off with force?

Indigenous women are encouraged to maintain long braids "to attract God-fearing men." Ravenwood opposes this custom by designing a spiritual anthem of rejection. The crucifixion of Christ is mimicked in dramatic fashion:

I leave the braid for my mother Nailed to the wall And walk out the door. [End Page 962]

Section Three: "Twilight's Lonely Cleave"

"Twilight's Lonely Cleave" extends visibility to native lands and mother tongues. The land possesses a vocabulary of its own. Readers encounter picturesque and soothing scenes. Ravenwood observes in "Atsisonvnv," "I stood among saplings stark/Against an indigo sky/Falling to my knees/Hands snow coffined." Nature embodies the role of a healer. The body aligns ambition with young "saplings," "indigo sky" fuels limitless dreams, and "snow" not only covers but comforts. "The Creeping Thief" amplifies this ancestral fire. The first nine lines speak to the complications of living as a deaf individual. Ravenwood states:

Deathly quiet is spelled withFour letters D E A FThe creeping thief stoleMy noise snuck inside nightlyCovering my ears as ifI were a child who didn't needTo hear descending quietenListen how closelyDeaf and Death rhyme

Deaf and Death are assigned the same consequence: Invisibility. "The creeping thief stole/My noise" exposes readers to ability poetics disseminated "quietly," one verse at a time...