Source on Linda Hogan (writer)

“in our human development we begin with ourselves and move outward toward relationship, and in writing work, it seems to be the same, that most writers begin with their own identity, with autobiography, and then move out toward family, friends, environment, country, world. I have noticed there's a return for many writers as they age…for others the world expands outward more and more, never returning to self...We need for writers to do both. We need the personal in its global context.”

“I love to read poetry, phone books, playing cards, novels, newspapers, bathroom walls - there's a story in all of it. And I love poets who bring together poetry and life in all its motion: Neruda, Forche, Cardenal, Dugan, Bishop...I learn from all of what I read and hear. And as Lame Deer said, we're surrounded by books. The stones are books, and we may read their stories. The trees are books with a story written in them. The water and land and each animal is a book, with a poem and story and song.”

“I consider caretaking the basic work of living on earth. I've often thought about how one of the things that was probably necessary for the woman's movement-the dominant culture woman's movement - was to break free of the duty of being a caretaker. But then, for women to return to being caretakers, because it's important to offer service to the living, and to the planet. I find many women now who are returning to the idea of being a caretaker, of nourishing as one of the primary roles of both men and women. I see a direct relation between how we care for the animal-people and the plants and insects and land and water, and how we care for each other, and for ourselves. Part of our work here is to care for life. (Smith: And what you're saying, I guess, is you can't limit that care to just your family and friends, to just the human creatures you love who come your way - you have to widen that.) LH: Yeah, it has to be widened. If you look at the book Call to Consciousness for instance, a community is not just us-our nuclear family, or the Indian community, or a "University community," as they say here--but the community of all living creatures.”

“I work best if I allow the process to take place. That doesn't mean I don't think, take measurements of what is just, feel out what is valuable to life, to self, to earth, where to take, where to return, what is the responsibility of my own work-you know, response-ability. I ask myself how best to let my words serve. I know that part of that is to take a global perspective, because I see what's happening in the world, and others see, and our combined voices are a chorus, a movement toward life. They are a protest against human-imposed suffering. They are vital energy going out into the world. We feed each other with that energy when we read each other's work. My other responsibility, I think, is to be honest about my life. That doesn't mean I won't write fiction, or that I'll "tell all"...But it means this: that I, as an Indian woman, from a non middle-class background, on the margin, not a member of the dominant culture I need to speak what my struggle has been, and offer the strength of that survival to keep us all moving together, to offer back my own words. This means to speak about what it's like to be of mixed blood, to have suffered losses, to have not been educated, to have worked primarily at working-class jobs until fairly recently and to have worked as a writer. Not that I think my own life is so significant although sometimes I think it's pretty incredible, I'll tell ya!...it's part of a historical process. It's a woman's experience, and an Indian woman's experience. And I've been given this gift of words, and I need to speak this life, and the political dimensions of it. I need to make the interpretation of my own place and the places of others in the American context. But I don't want to get too serious here. These responsibilities shouldn't be taken so seriously by writers, by women, as to take away passion, and joy, and play. Because we've got to keep energy moving. We must take in and out, like breathing. I've always thought there's nothing less peaceful than a somber peace movement, you know what I mean? You know those T shirts with Emma Goldman, saying, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution?" That's what peace and equality must mean to us all-that we can have joy in living, and no more cold war of the inner self.”

“I puzzle over humans. They can talk, but they can lie. They do not always know their own motivations.”

“It is a life of constant observation and learning. Sometimes, other than love and tenderness for our own, what else is there to learn in this world for us?”

“While groups of non-humans have different cultures, even different dialects in the same species, they accept one another. Humans find their differences too often as fracture lines. I have loved working with non-human animals, but find that I also have love for humans once I learn them.”

“I love the art of learning. It doesn’t always stay with me but reading about snail teeth and thinking about how many crows roost together, watching them fledge their young with the help of magpies, it is all exciting and leaves me, and hopefully the reader, in a state of wonder about our world and the cooperation of one bird with another. I think this also answers many of the questions about why it is important that we read and write such works. Readers fall in love with the planet, their own environment. They want to find their path toward making change, to learn how it may be done.”

“Writers who work in more than one genre find that their work is different in each way they write, yet the topic may be the same. It is just another form and way of thinking. Some things can’t be said in a poem or a novel but might become an essay. Other pieces of work begin as a poem then make a turn into an essay. The work is shape-shifting even if the inner person, the psyche of the writer, remains the same. The approach may be the same, but the final product is quite different than the writer first thought it would be. Creativity goes its own direction. It has its own life energy. Writing is the teacher and we follow it.”