Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Linda Hogan’s "The New Apartment: Minneapolis" is a poignant meditation on displacement, memory, and resilience, intertwining the personal with the historical in a space as intimate as a home and as vast as the universe. Hogan, a Chickasaw poet, often grapples with themes of Indigenous identity, colonization, and the natural world. In this poem, she transforms a seemingly ordinary apartment into a site where past and present converge, and where the echoes of history reverberate through the very walls.

The poem opens with an unsettling domestic image: "The floorboards creak. The moon is on the wrong side of the building, and burns remain on the floor." These initial lines establish a sense of disorientation and discomfort. The creaking floorboards evoke the building’s age, while the moon’s position—on the wrong side—suggests that something is fundamentally out of place, both literally and metaphorically. The burns on the floor hint at a history of damage, possibly violence, and set the tone for the layered histories the poem will explore.

The apartment itself becomes a living entity, imbued with the memories of its previous inhabitants: "The house wants to fall down the universe when earth turns. It still holds the coughs of old men and their canes tapping on the floor." The anthropomorphism of the house—its desire to fall down the universe—reflects the instability and transience of human lives contained within its walls. The coughs of old men and the sound of canes tapping evoke the lingering presence of those who have passed, suggesting that the apartment is a repository of personal and collective histories.

Hogan then broadens the scope from the apartment’s immediate past to the deeper, more painful history of Indigenous displacement and violence: "I think of Indian people here before me and how last spring white merchants hung an elder on a meathook and beat him and he was one of The People." This shocking image confronts the reader with the brutal realities faced by Native communities, even in contemporary settings. The casual cruelty of the white merchants contrasts starkly with the respect typically afforded to elders in Indigenous cultures, emphasizing the ongoing legacy of colonization and racism.

The speaker’s reflections on relocation—like putting the moon in prison with no food—capture the profound sense of dislocation experienced by Indigenous peoples forcibly removed from their homelands. The metaphor of the moon, already diminished as a crescent, being imprisoned, evokes a sense of both vulnerability and latent power, as Hogan warns: "but be warned, the moon grows full again." This suggests that despite oppression, there remains a potential for resurgence and resistance.

As the poem continues, Hogan dissolves the boundaries between the apartment’s physical space and the broader world outside: "the roofs of this town are all red and we are looking through the walls of houses at people suspended in air." The red roofs could symbolize both literal urban architecture and the bloodshed tied to historical and contemporary violence. The image of people suspended in air suggests a kind of liminality, as if the inhabitants are caught between worlds, between past traumas and present realities.

Hogan paints a diverse, multi-faceted portrait of urban life: "Some are baking, with flour on their hands, or sleeping on floor three, or getting drunk. I see the businessmen who hit their wives and the men who are tender fathers. There are women crying or making jokes. Children are laughing under beds." This catalog of everyday experiences humanizes the city’s inhabitants, showing both their vulnerabilities and strengths. By including both tenderness and violence, joy and sorrow, Hogan captures the complexity of urban life, suggesting that even in the heart of the city, people carry their own histories and struggles.

Amidst this urban tableau, Hogan interweaves Indigenous cultural practices: "Girls in navy-blue robes talk on the phone all night and some Pawnee is singing 49s, drumming the table." The 49s are a genre of social songs associated with Native American powwows, often linked to love and friendship. The presence of these songs within the apartment complex serves as a reminder that Indigenous culture persists, even in urban settings far from traditional homelands.

The poem also touches on the potential for resistance: "Inside the walls world changes are planned, bosses overthrown. If we had no coffee, cigarettes, or liquor, says the woman in room twelve, they’d have a revolution on their hands." This line humorously suggests that small comforts—coffee, cigarettes, liquor—serve as temporary pacifiers, preventing people from rising up against systemic injustices. Yet, the mention of world changes and bosses overthrown hints at a simmering desire for transformation and agency.

The poem’s tone shifts as the speaker contemplates the natural world beyond the apartment: "Beyond walls are lakes and plains, canyons and the universe; the stars are the key turning in the lock of night." Here, Hogan reconnects with the broader landscape, suggesting that despite urban confinement, there remains an intrinsic link to the natural world and the cosmos. The stars become a symbol of freedom and possibility, capable of unlocking the constraints imposed by both the apartment and historical oppression.

The poem concludes with a powerful return to cultural roots and community: "I have walked dark earth, opened a door to nights where there are no apartments, just drumming and singing; The Duck Song, The Snake Song, The Drunk Song." These songs, rooted in Indigenous tradition, represent a space where the speaker is no longer confined by the walls of the apartment or the city. In this imagined or remembered space, there is a sense of belonging and continuity that transcends displacement.

The final lines are a heartfelt invocation: "No one here remembers the city or has ever lost the will to go on. Hello aunt, hello brothers, hello trees and deer walking quietly on the soft red earth." This closing reaffirms the speaker’s connection to family, community, and the land. The soft red earth signifies a return to Indigenous homelands, both literal and spiritual, and a reaffirmation of identity and resilience.

Structurally, the poem unfolds in free verse, allowing Hogan to move fluidly between personal reflection, historical memory, and vivid imagery of urban and natural landscapes. The lack of punctuation and traditional stanza breaks creates a stream-of-consciousness effect, mirroring the way memories and experiences flow into one another, unbound by linear time.

In "The New Apartment: Minneapolis," Linda Hogan masterfully weaves together the intimate and the historical, the personal and the collective. The apartment becomes a microcosm of the broader Indigenous experience, reflecting both the traumas of displacement and the enduring strength of cultural identity. Through her evocative imagery and lyrical narrative, Hogan reveals that even in spaces marked by loss and violence, there remains the potential for connection, resistance, and renewal. The poem ultimately celebrates the resilience of Indigenous peoples, who, despite centuries of colonization and relocation, continue to find ways to affirm their identities and sustain their communities.

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