The Secret Importance of Your Beaten Heart

In a poem called a “Song,” Linda Hogan crafts a song for turtles and other creatures killed through oil spills in the gulf. At once a praise song for the beauty of the sea, the earth, and its animals, this song also functions as a lament: for the history erased by industrial practices; for the lack of respect and love for living breathing other-than-human lives; for plastic and the plastic containers used to hold the body of a dead sea turtle. The poem veers towards a prayer, too, begging forgiveness for being “thrown off true.”

Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw novelist, essayist, and environmentalist. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs and an MA in English and creative writing from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Her books of poetry include Dark. Sweet., The Book of Medicines, Seeing Through the Sun, and many more.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.