prosesiren's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Nothing prepared me for the way I was torn open and forced to acknowledge myself and truths I refused to admit about why talking about my identity aches through time. I cried, shook, and felt so angry I couldn’t believe it. I felt hopeful and inspired just as often. I think this anthology is important to me as an indigenous person, but that everyone should read the beautiful poems presented here. There’s something beautiful about the collective that will never tire.
mepresley's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
I enjoyed reading this antholgoy, which is such an important one--we should read more indigenous literature, understand the whitewashed version of history that we got in school, and the way that our country is built on genocide. I love that the collection represents a print accompaniment to the important digital project undertaken by Joy Harjo as Poet Laureate. The theme is place, whether "where they currently live, in their homelands, or where they feel most rooted" (xiv) and displacement, the latter of which I found was more heavily represented, in very different ways, some much more literal than others. As with any anthology, you are getting more breadth than depth, a kind of introduction to various voices, and so how much any given poem resonates will vary widely and there won't be as much cohesion among the included poems.
My favorite poems were Cathy Tagnak Rexford's "Anchorage, 1989," Sy Hoahwah's "Hell's Acre," M.L. Smoker's "The Book of Missing, Murdered and Indiginous--Chapter 1," Tanya Winder's "like any good indian woman," Marcie Rendon's "Resilience," Sherwin Bitsui's excerpt from "Dissolve," and Natalie Diaz's "Postcolonial Love Poem." Excerpts:
"Anchorage, 1989"
"...each held
in drowned memory, the same way our mouths
know the taste of salt, or not salt itself,
but the memory of salt. It is a narrow passage
between breath and memory, leaning inward."
"Hell's Acre"
"I heard the panthers summoning rain
to hide their wedding.
The skeleton got scared and held my hand.
The skeleton held my switchblade
on our way down the ancient hog trail.
'Oh, there goes your corpse again,' the skeleton lullabied."
....
"Really I was nothing more
than a toothpick from somewhere or another
held in the mouth of an angel
whose name comes from the sound of shivers
it causes
running down people's spine."
....
"During a thunderstorm, Zeus and Jesus
licked the rain off each other's hands and arms
like wild animals.
I saw their connection."
"The Book of Missing, Murdered and Indigenous--Chapter 1"
"It is rage that pulls her up from this place.
She spews out the wretched and miserable
as particles of dawn-lit soil illuminate her skin.
Her hair is a two-edged sword."
"like any good indian woman" [lack of capitalization original to the poem]
" I pull my brothers from cars named after indians
navajo, cherokee, & tacoma. on a danger destined road my brothers are
born longing for a way back from relocation & long walks across miles &
miles & miles of removal. ..."
"Resilience"
"People who give more than they get. Mothers who love their children,
fathers who stay. Grandparents who babysit, even in a wheelchair.
We create beauty out of scraps. Hold together cars with ducts tape. ....
...It is getting up and putting one foot in front of the other,
even when you don't want to. That is our resilience."
from "Dissolve"
"A hovering smear
trailing desert washes
fenced in with a murder of mirrors
illuminates the eating groaning over us."
....
"This plot, now a hotel garden,
its fountain gushing forth--
the slashed wrists of the Colorado."
"Postcolonial Love Poem"
"... The war ended
depending on which war you mean: those we started,
before those, millennia ago and onward,
those which started me, which I lost and won--
these ever-blooming wounds.
I was built by wage. So I wage Love and worse--
always another campaign to march across
a desert night for the cannon flash of your pale skin
settling in a silver lagoon of smoke at your breast."
My favorite poems were Cathy Tagnak Rexford's "Anchorage, 1989," Sy Hoahwah's "Hell's Acre," M.L. Smoker's "The Book of Missing, Murdered and Indiginous--Chapter 1," Tanya Winder's "like any good indian woman," Marcie Rendon's "Resilience," Sherwin Bitsui's excerpt from "Dissolve," and Natalie Diaz's "Postcolonial Love Poem." Excerpts:
"Anchorage, 1989"
"...each held
in drowned memory, the same way our mouths
know the taste of salt, or not salt itself,
but the memory of salt. It is a narrow passage
between breath and memory, leaning inward."
"Hell's Acre"
"I heard the panthers summoning rain
to hide their wedding.
The skeleton got scared and held my hand.
The skeleton held my switchblade
on our way down the ancient hog trail.
'Oh, there goes your corpse again,' the skeleton lullabied."
....
"Really I was nothing more
than a toothpick from somewhere or another
held in the mouth of an angel
whose name comes from the sound of shivers
it causes
running down people's spine."
....
"During a thunderstorm, Zeus and Jesus
licked the rain off each other's hands and arms
like wild animals.
I saw their connection."
"The Book of Missing, Murdered and Indigenous--Chapter 1"
"It is rage that pulls her up from this place.
She spews out the wretched and miserable
as particles of dawn-lit soil illuminate her skin.
Her hair is a two-edged sword."
"like any good indian woman" [lack of capitalization original to the poem]
" I pull my brothers from cars named after indians
navajo, cherokee, & tacoma. on a danger destined road my brothers are
born longing for a way back from relocation & long walks across miles &
miles & miles of removal. ..."
"Resilience"
"People who give more than they get. Mothers who love their children,
fathers who stay. Grandparents who babysit, even in a wheelchair.
We create beauty out of scraps. Hold together cars with ducts tape. ....
...It is getting up and putting one foot in front of the other,
even when you don't want to. That is our resilience."
from "Dissolve"
"A hovering smear
trailing desert washes
fenced in with a murder of mirrors
illuminates the eating groaning over us."
....
"This plot, now a hotel garden,
its fountain gushing forth--
the slashed wrists of the Colorado."
"Postcolonial Love Poem"
"... The war ended
depending on which war you mean: those we started,
before those, millennia ago and onward,
those which started me, which I lost and won--
these ever-blooming wounds.
I was built by wage. So I wage Love and worse--
always another campaign to march across
a desert night for the cannon flash of your pale skin
settling in a silver lagoon of smoke at your breast."
kiramke's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Excellent collection of necessary artists. I'm just glad this exists.