(1927-1997)
On July 2, 1997, the Cherokee writer, Gogisgi/Carroll Arnett, passed away in Michigan. Gogisgi, which means “Smoke” in Cherokee, was born in Oklahoma City in 1927. He attended the University of Oklahoma for a while soon after he left the U.S. Marines at the end of World War II. For the last thirty years he had lived in Michigan, where he had taught as a college professor at Central Michigan University until his retirement a few years ago. In more than thirty years of writing, he published twelve books of poems and was recognized as a major Indian poet, albeit lesser known in his native city and state than a number of others who lay claim to Cherokee culture.
His books were: Then (1965), Not Only Than (1967), Like a Wall (1969), Through the Woods (1971), Earlier (1972), Come (1973), Tsalagi (1976), South Line (1979), Rounds (1982), Engine (1988), Night Perimeter (1991), and Spells (1995). I may have left out one or more, but I don’t think so. When Tsalagi came out, Carroll sent me a copy and afterwards he sent me a copy of each new book he published. I value them highly, just as I valued his friendship.
I was privileged to know Carroll for twenty-three years. He was a good friend, a strong influence as a writer and as a person, an older brother. In fact, it was by this latter designation – older brother – that I addressed him in our letters. His generosity to a host of younger writers – Gordon Henry, Joy Harjo, Lance Henson, Barney Bush, me – is well-known, as well as his encouragement and help to elder writers, like the late Louise Littelcoon Oliver. In his poems, Carroll always stressed that waste is perhaps the most unforgivable thing that human beings indulge in – the waste of time, of emotions, of land and resources, of each other. A short poem of his sums this up quite well (the shortness of the poem a string indication of how he always avoided over-expending words):
The Old Man Said: Two
The wisdom of an
animal may be
measured by
the quantity of its
excrement.
See
how little of his
waste brother deer
leaves behind.
In one of Carroll’s last poems, he decries waste again an instance of human waste of a staggering magnitude – the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995:
And So On
168 murdered
How the sun can still
shine there I don’t know.
Others say they know –
good for them. Words about
hope everlasting, the spirits
of kids laughing, about
vengeance and justice –
mere comfort. A massive
emptiness sits there
in the sun’s silent light,
impossible to forgive
as it is to forget.
Carroll’s life was the exact opposite of wastefulness. It was a life filled with sharing and compassion, of building and creating, of nurturing and preserving. He cannot be replaced and I find I am already missing his presence tremendously.
—Geary Hobson (1997)
