Poor white man. Many want all this earth. Let's assume that Poulin's poems have value. I am going to die Poems, like money, have worth only within a larger field of value. Words that seek to appropriate a power can do so only if the community participates in the shared meaning of the words.
Solitary words have no magic, no meaning.
They cannot cleanse. Even dreams are not singular. And these words, torn from their context of a living culture, cannot even function as expression, exchange, except as entertainment. This twisting of an acknowledgement of dependency to one of a pathetic helplessness is but another example of the Western liberal intellectual utilizing alienation to promote a career, a way to accumulate capital at the Indian's expense. Bruchac has chosen the words and given us a drama.