Living nations, living words : an anthology of first peoples poetry

Title:

Author:

Harjo, Joy, editor.

Hayden, Carla Diane, 1952- author of introduction, etc.

Library of Congress, issuing body.

Publication Information:

New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2021]

Subject:

American poetry -- Indian authors.

American poetry -- 21st century.

Indians of North America -- Poetry.

Physical Description:

xvii, 221 pages : portraits ; 21 cm

Edition:

First edition.

ISBN:

9780393867916

Subject Term:

American poetry -- Indian authors.

American poetry -- 21st century.

Indians of North America -- Poetry.

Summary:

"A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today. Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry. This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. With work from Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, Layli Long Soldier, among others, Living Nations, Living Words showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "poetry [that] emerges from the soul of a community, the heart and lands of the people. In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than 500 living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.""--

Holds:

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Collection	Call Number	Status
Nonfiction	811.008 LIV	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry.

This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project--including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier, among others--to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship." In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.

Author Notes

Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently An American Sunrise, and a memoir. Crazy Brave. Named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019, she lives in Tulsa. Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

This richly individualized anthology takes its title from an interactive online map of current Native poets, a project undertaken by Harjo during her tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate. Sponsored by the Library of Congress, the map enables visitors to explore historical contexts in multimedia offerings, including recordings of recitations and commentary by the contributors, who each chose a poem "based on the theme of place and displacement, and with four touchpoints in mind: visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment." Poets also decided where to place themselves on the map, and this literary agency as well as the large portraits and brief bios that introduce each writer humanize the collection. Several established Native writers are included, such as Sherwin Bitsui, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and Craig Santos Perez, but the anthology dedicates ample space to emerging authors. And while another recent anthology edited by Harjo and others, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (2020), also organizes poems by geography, this title approaches place metaphorically, collecting poets and poems around shared themes. "East" includes pieces on daybreak and beginning,"Center" functions as "the belly and the heart of presence," and "West" signals departure and looks to the future.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Poet Laureate Harjo's historically important project for American poetry belongs in every collection.

Caria D. HaydenJoy HarjoJake SkeetsOfelia ZepedaImaikalani KalaheleElise PaschenCraig Santos PerezSuzan Shown HarjoRay Young BearDeborah A. MirandaElizabeth WoodyHeather CahoonJennifer Elise FoersterLeanne HoweLaura Da'Lehua M. TaitanoRoberta HillCathy Tagnak RexfordJoy HarjoGordon Henry Jr.Duane NiatumAnita EndrezzeNila NorthsunBrandy Nalani McDougallCarrie Ayagaduk OjanenDenise SweetLouise ErdrichHeid E. ErdrichHenry Real BirdSy HoahwahJoan Naviyuk KaneM. L. SmokerTanaya WinderKimberly BlaeserMahealani Perez-WendtKim ShuckAlex JacobsB: William BearhartMarcie RendonJoe Dale Tate NevaquayaNo'u RevillaTiffany MidgeEric GansworthSherwin BitsuiCedar SigoLaura ToheLayli Long SoldierLuci TapahonsoNatalie Diaz

Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
Becoming/East
Daybreak	p. 3
B 'o E-a:g mas 'ab Him g Ju:ki/It is Going to Rain	p. 6
Maoli	p. 9
Heritage, X	p. 11
Off-Island CHamorus	p. 14
Welcoming Home Living Beings	p. 17
Wichihaka/The One I Live With	p. 21
Indigenous Physics: The Element Colonizatium	p. 24
Coquille	p. 31
Baby Out of Cut-Open Woman	p. 34
Notes from Coosa	p. 37
1918 Union Valley Road Oklahoma	p. 39
The Rhetorical Feminine	p. 47
Current, I	p. 50
These Rivers Remember	p. 62
Anchorage, 1989	p. 65
Exile of Memory	p. 71
Center/North-South
River People-The Lost Watch	p. 81
Old Humptulips	p. 88
Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Indian	p. 90
I gotta be Indian tomorrow	p. 95
This Island on which I Love You	p. 98
Tiimiaq, something carried,	p. 102
Palominos Near Tuba City	p. 106
Advice to Myself	p. 108
Peacemaking	p. 111
Thought	p. 115
Hell's Acre	p. 117
Rookeries	p. 124
The Book of the Missing, Murdered and Indigenous-Chapter 1	p. 127
Like any good indian woman	p. 130
Poem on Disappearance	p. 133
Na Wai Ea, The Freed Waters	p. 136
Departure/West
This River	p. 157
Trudell	p. 159
Transplant: After Georgia O'Keeffe's Pelvis IV, 1944	p. 162
Resilience	p. 165
In the Field	p. 168
Shapeshifters Banned, Censored, or Otherwise Shit-Listed, aka Chosen Family Poem	p. 175
Antiquing with Indians	p. 178
Angry Red Planet	p. 181
From Dissolve	p. 186
What did you learn here? (Old Man House, Suquamish)	p. 190
Within Dinétah the People's Spirit Remains Strong	p. 193
Resolution 2	p. 200
Ilííngo Naalyéhé: Goods of Value	p. 203
Postcolonial Love Poem	p. 208
Acknowledgments	p. 211
Credits	p. 213
Index	p. 219

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

Table of Contents