oh papa, to have you drift up, some part of you drift up through water through
fresh water into the teal plate of sky soaking foothills, papa,
to have your breath leave, escape you, escape the
weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,
till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white, the white
sheets, airborne, taken in a gust of wind and unbridled ponies, let the ponies
out, I would open that gate if I could find it, if there was one
to let you go, to drift up into, out, out
of this experiment into the dome of all breath and wind and
reappear in the sound of the first year’s thunder with
Chigayow cutting the clouds over your eyes expanding, wafting, wings
of a bird over fields, fat ponies, spruce, birch and poplar, circling
wider than that tight square sanitized whiteness
you breathe in, if you could just stop breathing you could
escape, go anywhere, blow, tumble in the prairie grass,
bloom in the face of crocuses
appear in the smell of cedar dust off a saw
in the smell of thick leather
in the whistling sounds of the trees
in the far off sound of a chainsaw or someone chopping wood
in the smooth curve of a felt hat, in unbridled ponies
In this poem, a dramatic monologue, the speaker implores their father to do something both real and more real in its imagining.
- What does the title of the poem mean? Can you find a good example—a verse or phrase—that explains why the poem is called “Let the Ponies Out”?
- The poem begins with the speaker addressing her “papa.” He is named only one other time. In what other ways does he manifest himself in the poem?
- Critic Brenda Payne has observed that “the frequent commas (in this poem) force readers to linger . . . in the suffocating atmosphere of illness.” Is that how you experienced the punctuation in the poem? What (other) possible effects might the frequent commas have on the reader?
- How do the different ponies in the poem make you feel? What do you think they symbolize?
- Consider the phrase “that tight square sanitized whiteness.” Dumont is a celebrated Cree-Métis poet—is she talking about more than one thing here? What do you think the phrase refers to?
Writing Activity
Write a poem, an elegy, for someone important in your life, imagining that they are very ill. This could be your father, a father figure, or someone else of significance to you, who you feel comfortable imagining in this way and writing about and to.
Useful Links
Marilyn Dumont on connecting to her Métis heritage through poetry (interview), https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thenextchapter/clara-hughes-roy-macgregor-and-guy-vanderhaeghe-1.3288475/marilyn-dumont-on-connecting-to-her-m%C3%A9tis-heritage-through-poetry-1.3289223
The devil's language of Marilyn Dumont (essay), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11059-017-0375-z
The Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture (biography), https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/10249.Marilyn
Marilyn Dumont, “Let the Ponies Out,” from A Really Good Brown Girl. Brick Books, 1996. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
