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saratellmanveloz's review
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
A poet a day but only on the days when I am not working, it has taken years to complete this book. I am deeper for the time it has taken.
This is a must read for anyone interested in the voices of America’s Native Nations.
This is a must read for anyone interested in the voices of America’s Native Nations.
mepresley's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
5.0
It's not that this is a poem collection that for me personally was a 5-star read (and wouldn't it be so, so hard to accomplish that with an anthology??), but rather that I don't think they could have done a better job at the important task they set out to do with this anthology.
The poems represent a wide variety of native voices across time and place. Beginning in the Northeast and Midwest; moving to the Plains and Mountains; then the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Pacific Islands; the Southwest & West; and ending in the Southeast, and each section has its own short, accessible introductory material. There is also an introduction and conclusion to the entire anthology to provide socio-historical context.
These are the voices that colonists erased and wrote over in their white-washed history of this country, the voices that have never been included in the American Literature canon, where on the whole white people fail to recognize that we built our lives off native genocide and outright theft of their land--that we still wash our hands of the reservations where we forced natives and the poverty we caused and do nothing to alleviate, a legacy in that way not so different at all from the way that African-Americans have suffered during and after slavery, a cycle of poverty and small slices of opportunity that essentially guarantees problems with crime and addiction through denying basic needs, but for which society asks us to blame those individuals.
We are still destroying the entire planet because the white colonist Christian worldview gives us the land and animals over which to dominate, a foundation for a neo-liberal, late-stage capitalist dystopia. We found paradise, and we built a fucking parking lot, and we just keep doubling down, whereas the native worldview recognizes and respects land, not as a thing to own, respects animals, respects the relationship between people and place.
My favorite poems in the collection, by section were:
*s denote stand-out favorites
Northeast & Midwest
Peter Blue Cloud's "Rattle"
Jim Northrup's "Shrinking Away"
Chystos' "The Real Indian Leans Against" and "Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading"
Linda LeGarde Grover's "Everything You Need to Know in Life You'll Learn in Boarding School"
Marcie Rendon's "What's an Indian Woman to Do?"
Alex Jacobs' "Indian Machismo or Skin to Skin"
Denise Sweet's "Song for Discharming" and "Mapping the Land"
Kimberly M. Blaeser's "Apprenticed to Justice" and "Captivity"*
Karenne Wood, "Hard Times"
Plains & Mountains
John Trudell, "Diablo Canyon"*
Nila NorthSun, "99 things to do before you die" and "cooking class"
Louise Erdrich, "Advice to Myself"*
Tiffany Midge, "Teeth in the Wrong Places"
Layli Long Soldier, "38"*
Tanya Winder, "learning to say i love you" and "the milky way escapes my mouth" *
Pacific Northwest, Alaska, & Pacific Islands
Mary TallMountain, "There Is No Word for Goodbye"
Nora Marks Dauenhauer, "How to make good baked salmon from the river"
Sherman Alexie, "The Summer of Black Widows"
No'u Revilla, "Smoke Screen"
Southwest & West
Adrian C. Louis, "The Is the Time of the Grasshoppers" and "All That I See Is Dying"
Deborah A. Miranda, "Mesa Verde"
Hershman R. John, "A Strong Male Rain"
Sherwin Bitsui, "The Caravan" *
Orlando White, "To See Letters" and "Empty Set"
Casandra Lopez, "A New Language"
Julian Talamantex Brolaski, "Stonewall to Standing Rock"
Natalie Diaz, "It Was the Animals" and "When My Brother Was an Aztec"*
Jake Skeets, "Drunktown"
Southeast
Linda Hogan, "The History of Fire" *
Joy Harjo, "Running"*
Though it seems a bit less ... useful than my usual practice of quoting some favorite lines from favorite poems because it won't represent a sample of a single poet's voice, nonetheless, a review feels incomplete without it, so, to whit.
Northeast & Midwest
Kimberly M. Blaeser's "Apprenticed to Justice" and "Captivity"*
"Apprenticed to Justice"
"And no dustbowl wind
can lift
this history
of loss."
"This is the sound
of trees falling in the woods
when they are heard,
or red nations falling
when they are remembered."
"Captivity"
"Mary Rowlandson made it big in the colonial tabloids. Indian captivity
narrative a seeming misnomer. But ink makes strong cultural bars of bias.
This is how we remain captured in print."
Plains & Mountains
John Trudell, "Diablo Canyon"
"This time I almost wanted to believe you
When you spoke of peace and love and
Caring and duty and god and destiny"
Louise Erdrich, "Advice to Myself"
"Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome."
"...Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks."
Layli Long Soldier, "38"
"the hanging took place on December 26th, 1862--the day after
Christmas.
This was the same week that President Lincoln signed The Emancipation
Proclamation.
In the preceding sentence, I italicize "same week" for emphasis.
"It could be said, this money was payment for the land the Dakota ceded;
for living within assigned boundaries (a reservation); and for reliquishing
rights to their vast hunting territory which, in turn, made Dakota people
dependent on other means to survive: money.
The previous sentence is circular, which is akin to so many aspects of
history."
"Without money, store credit or rights to hunt beyond their ten-mile tract of
land, Dakota people began to starve.
The Dakota people were starving.
The Dakota people starved.
In the preceding sentence, the word "starved" does not need italics for emphasis."
Southwest & West
Sherwin Bitsui, "The Caravan"
"The city's neon embers
stripe the asphalt's blank page
where this story pens itself nightly;
where ghosts weave their oily hair
into his belt of ice,
dress him in pleated shadows
and lay him fetal
on the icy concrete--
the afterbirth of sirens glistening over him"
Natalie Diaz, "It Was the Animals"
"His fingers were silkened by pipe blisters.
He held the jagged piece of wood so gently.
I had forgotten that my brother could be gentle."
"He was wrong. I could take the ark.
I could even take his marvelously fucked fingers.
The way they almost glittered.
It was the animals--the animals I could not take--"
"When My Brother Was an Aztec"
"he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents
every morning...."
"my parents walking behind him like effigies in a procession
he might burn to the ground at any moment....
"....My parents
lost their appetites for food, for sons. Like all bad kings, my brother
wore a crown, a green baseball cap turned backwards"
Southeast
Linda Hogan, "The History of Fire"
"My dear one is a jar of buried bones
I have saved.
This is where our living goes
and still we breathe,
and even the dry grass
with sun and lightening above it
has no choice but to grow
and then lie down"
Joy Harjo, "Running"
"It's closing time. Violence is my boyfriend
With a cross to bear
Hoisted on by the church."
"I was afraid of the dark, because then I could see
Everything. The truth with its eyes staring
Back at me. The mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth,
No words, just a hiss and a snap
I could hear my heart hurting
With my "in-the-dark ears"
The poems represent a wide variety of native voices across time and place. Beginning in the Northeast and Midwest; moving to the Plains and Mountains; then the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Pacific Islands; the Southwest & West; and ending in the Southeast, and each section has its own short, accessible introductory material. There is also an introduction and conclusion to the entire anthology to provide socio-historical context.
These are the voices that colonists erased and wrote over in their white-washed history of this country, the voices that have never been included in the American Literature canon, where on the whole white people fail to recognize that we built our lives off native genocide and outright theft of their land--that we still wash our hands of the reservations where we forced natives and the poverty we caused and do nothing to alleviate, a legacy in that way not so different at all from the way that African-Americans have suffered during and after slavery, a cycle of poverty and small slices of opportunity that essentially guarantees problems with crime and addiction through denying basic needs, but for which society asks us to blame those individuals.
We are still destroying the entire planet because the white colonist Christian worldview gives us the land and animals over which to dominate, a foundation for a neo-liberal, late-stage capitalist dystopia. We found paradise, and we built a fucking parking lot, and we just keep doubling down, whereas the native worldview recognizes and respects land, not as a thing to own, respects animals, respects the relationship between people and place.
My favorite poems in the collection, by section were:
*s denote stand-out favorites
Northeast & Midwest
Peter Blue Cloud's "Rattle"
Jim Northrup's "Shrinking Away"
Chystos' "The Real Indian Leans Against" and "Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading"
Linda LeGarde Grover's "Everything You Need to Know in Life You'll Learn in Boarding School"
Marcie Rendon's "What's an Indian Woman to Do?"
Alex Jacobs' "Indian Machismo or Skin to Skin"
Denise Sweet's "Song for Discharming" and "Mapping the Land"
Kimberly M. Blaeser's "Apprenticed to Justice" and "Captivity"*
Karenne Wood, "Hard Times"
Plains & Mountains
John Trudell, "Diablo Canyon"*
Nila NorthSun, "99 things to do before you die" and "cooking class"
Louise Erdrich, "Advice to Myself"*
Tiffany Midge, "Teeth in the Wrong Places"
Layli Long Soldier, "38"*
Tanya Winder, "learning to say i love you" and "the milky way escapes my mouth" *
Pacific Northwest, Alaska, & Pacific Islands
Mary TallMountain, "There Is No Word for Goodbye"
Nora Marks Dauenhauer, "How to make good baked salmon from the river"
Sherman Alexie, "The Summer of Black Widows"
No'u Revilla, "Smoke Screen"
Southwest & West
Adrian C. Louis, "The Is the Time of the Grasshoppers" and "All That I See Is Dying"
Deborah A. Miranda, "Mesa Verde"
Hershman R. John, "A Strong Male Rain"
Sherwin Bitsui, "The Caravan" *
Orlando White, "To See Letters" and "Empty Set"
Casandra Lopez, "A New Language"
Julian Talamantex Brolaski, "Stonewall to Standing Rock"
Natalie Diaz, "It Was the Animals" and "When My Brother Was an Aztec"*
Jake Skeets, "Drunktown"
Southeast
Linda Hogan, "The History of Fire" *
Joy Harjo, "Running"*
Though it seems a bit less ... useful than my usual practice of quoting some favorite lines from favorite poems because it won't represent a sample of a single poet's voice, nonetheless, a review feels incomplete without it, so, to whit.
Northeast & Midwest
Kimberly M. Blaeser's "Apprenticed to Justice" and "Captivity"*
"Apprenticed to Justice"
"And no dustbowl wind
can lift
this history
of loss."
"This is the sound
of trees falling in the woods
when they are heard,
or red nations falling
when they are remembered."
"Captivity"
"Mary Rowlandson made it big in the colonial tabloids. Indian captivity
narrative a seeming misnomer. But ink makes strong cultural bars of bias.
This is how we remain captured in print."
Plains & Mountains
John Trudell, "Diablo Canyon"
"This time I almost wanted to believe you
When you spoke of peace and love and
Caring and duty and god and destiny"
Louise Erdrich, "Advice to Myself"
"Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome."
"...Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks."
Layli Long Soldier, "38"
"the hanging took place on December 26th, 1862--the day after
Christmas.
This was the same week that President Lincoln signed The Emancipation
Proclamation.
In the preceding sentence, I italicize "same week" for emphasis.
"It could be said, this money was payment for the land the Dakota ceded;
for living within assigned boundaries (a reservation); and for reliquishing
rights to their vast hunting territory which, in turn, made Dakota people
dependent on other means to survive: money.
The previous sentence is circular, which is akin to so many aspects of
history."
"Without money, store credit or rights to hunt beyond their ten-mile tract of
land, Dakota people began to starve.
The Dakota people were starving.
The Dakota people starved.
In the preceding sentence, the word "starved" does not need italics for emphasis."
Southwest & West
Sherwin Bitsui, "The Caravan"
"The city's neon embers
stripe the asphalt's blank page
where this story pens itself nightly;
where ghosts weave their oily hair
into his belt of ice,
dress him in pleated shadows
and lay him fetal
on the icy concrete--
the afterbirth of sirens glistening over him"
Natalie Diaz, "It Was the Animals"
"His fingers were silkened by pipe blisters.
He held the jagged piece of wood so gently.
I had forgotten that my brother could be gentle."
"He was wrong. I could take the ark.
I could even take his marvelously fucked fingers.
The way they almost glittered.
It was the animals--the animals I could not take--"
"When My Brother Was an Aztec"
"he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents
every morning...."
"my parents walking behind him like effigies in a procession
he might burn to the ground at any moment....
"....My parents
lost their appetites for food, for sons. Like all bad kings, my brother
wore a crown, a green baseball cap turned backwards"
Southeast
Linda Hogan, "The History of Fire"
"My dear one is a jar of buried bones
I have saved.
This is where our living goes
and still we breathe,
and even the dry grass
with sun and lightening above it
has no choice but to grow
and then lie down"
Joy Harjo, "Running"
"It's closing time. Violence is my boyfriend
With a cross to bear
Hoisted on by the church."
"I was afraid of the dark, because then I could see
Everything. The truth with its eyes staring
Back at me. The mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth,
No words, just a hiss and a snap
I could hear my heart hurting
With my "in-the-dark ears"
mcbooklover728's review
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
funnellegant's review against another edition
5.0
This anthology stretched my understanding and appreciation of indigenous oral and written art. It showcased common themes of loss and grit while proving that national identities create diverse and heterogenous voices. I loved the organizational choice to use the Muscogean directional path and group poetry by place, from East to North to West to South, as well as the choice to include so much in its original language.
23149014345613's review
5.0
I don't read a lot of poetry, and I would like to read more. I was very excited when I found this book because it's new, I like Joy Harjo, and I'm generally interested in Native American fiction and literature. Still, I was daunted by 450 pages of it and figured I would skim it, skip around, leave parts untouched.
Nope. Sat down and was literally so absorbed I forgot to eat. Read every word, cover to cover. I don't know if this is just hitting me at a time when I really need it, but this is a beautiful anthology, thoughtfully organized and sourced, that made me feel deeply. I teared up at several points. Just pure magic.
Nope. Sat down and was literally so absorbed I forgot to eat. Read every word, cover to cover. I don't know if this is just hitting me at a time when I really need it, but this is a beautiful anthology, thoughtfully organized and sourced, that made me feel deeply. I teared up at several points. Just pure magic.
tadasborne's review
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0