Mary_Tallmountain

Mary Tallmountain Mary Tallmountain is considered one of the greatest writers amongst the Native American community. Although she really didn’t gain much recognition nationally until the early 1980’s when she won the Pushcart Prize. She is mostly known as a spiritual and cultural writer for instance the poem, “There Is No Word for Goodbye.” In this poem she shows the conversation between an Athabaskan girl and her aunt. The girl is trying to find out how to say goodbye in Athabaskan. The aunt in the poem seems to be very old and wise. You see this when the girl was looking into her net of wrinkles and her wise eyes. Her wrinkles symbolizes her old age which also symbolizes knowledge. Her “Wise black pools of her eyes”(Tallmountain 177-178) symbolizes her immeasurable depth of wisdom. She is old, and at this point the niece asks her how to say goodbye in Athabaskan. The aunt says, “Ah, nothing…we just say, Tlaa. That means see you.”(Tallmountain 178) What exactly did the aunt mean' Do the Athabaskans’ not like the word goodbye, or do they imply that they feel no sense of separation when they goodbye, word, aunt, poem, girl, wise, say, athabaskan, tallmountain, symbolizes, old, language, each, again, wrinkles, we’ll, very, understand, tells, telling, spiritually, spiritual, someplace, says, really, point, physically, person, one, niece, native, mjeshtri, might, mary