Native Universe: Voices of Indian America by
This gorgeous volume draws from the vast archives of the National Museum of the American Indian and the voices of some of the most prominent Native American scholars, writers, activists and tribal leaders. More than 300 full-color illustrations depict the artistry and culture of our hemisphere’s diverse indigenous peoples. With its insightful, firsthand prose, the book is a reminder that the ancient philosophies and folkways are just as valuable and relevant in today’s world as they were generations ago.
Best New Poets 2017: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers by
Rail / Kai Carlson-Wee -- I woke up / Jameson Fitzpatrick -- It is known to the State of California / Samantha Grenrock -- Anniversary III / Vanessa Moody -- On the Dred Ranch Road just off 283 / Chad Abushanab -- The moment I saw a pelican devour / Paige Lewis -- Nevada / Connor Yeck -- Ode to working / Kien Lam -- Meanwhile in America / Christina Im -- Fairy tale with the silver gun / Anna Newman -- Tree Haibun / Alyssa Ogi -- Free armchair, Worcester / Edgar Kunz -- The Hapa anthem / Benjamin Naka Hasebe Kingsley -- Blue rhino / Sarah Bates -- Self-portrait as 1879-1934 / Michael Wasson -- Obsession #1: film with railroad tracks / Lily Zhou -- How we left: Film treatment / Fatimah Asghar -- On this side of the desert / Alfredo Aguilar -- From the lost letters to Matias Perez, aeronaut / Andres Rojas -- Futures / Erin L. McCoy -- On eagerness / Bernard Ferguson -- Unanswered questions about the war / Mary Angelino -- Death in parentheses / Yuki Tanaka -- Leave / Zaina Alsous --- Social death, an address / Xandria Phillips -- God particle / Keith S. Wilson -- Never do housework with imperfect intent / Meghan Maguire Dahn -- What we see, what sees us / K. T. Landon -- Memoria animalia / M.K. Foster -- American landscapes / Caitlin Roach -- Litany according to the laws of heat in southern Appalachia / Samantha Deal -- Kristina's world: after Wyeth / Kristina Martino -- Watching Underworld, Inc. episode 3: "Human cargo" / Eloisa Amezcua -- Motherland / Leila Chatti -- Thank you, forgiveness / Bryce Berkowitz -- What clowns / Amanda Turner -- No crying in baseball / Shane Lake -- Excursus: a reverie / Jonah Mixon Webster -- Landscape with horse & two boys kissing / Aidan Forster -- Foreign / Nathan Lipps -- Séance / Brennan Bestwick -- In currents / Adam J. Gellings -- What's underneath must be examined & released / Tyler Kline -- Ars mythos / Madeleine Wattenberg -- Against naming / Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach -- Hive / M'Bilia Meekers -- Altarpiece in apricot light / JD Scott -- Freeway / Kara Krewer -- Queerodactyl V / Roy G. Guzmán -- Last December / Ösel Jessica Plante.
In Mad Love and War by
Joy Harjo is a powerful voice for her Creek (Muscogee) tribe ("a stolen people in a stolen land"), for other oppressed people, and for herself. Her poems, both sacred ad secular, are written with the passions of anger, grief, and love, at once tender and furious. They are rooted in the land; they are one with the deer and the fox, the hawk and the eagle, the sun, moon, and wind, and the seasons –; "spring/ was lean and hungry with he hope of children and corn." There are enemies here, also lovers; there are ghost dancers, ancestors old and new, who rise again "to walk in shoes of fire."
Indeed, fire and its aftermath is a constant image in the burning book. Skies are "incendiary"; the "smoke of dawn" turns enemies into ashes: "I am fire eaten by wind." "Your fire scorched/ my lips." "I am lighting the fire that crawls from my spine/ to the gods with a coal from my sister's flame."
But the spirit of this book is not consumed. It is not limited by mad love or war, and "there is something larger than the memory/ of a dispossessed people." That something larger is, for example, revolution, freedom, birth.
The Business of Fancydancing by
One of the most vital of the younger writers...Watch this guy. He's making myth. -- Joy Harjo. The high spirit of Crazy Horse...is alive in this book and dances powerfully. -- American Book Review. Tremendous pain and anger, but there is also love, humor and plenty of irony... recommended for literature collections in all types of libraries. -- Library Journal.
Voices under One Sky: Contemporary Native Literature by
Introduction / Trish Fox Roman (Ojibway) -- "My moccasins have not walked" / Duke Redbird (Chippewa) -- A mountain legend / Jordan Wheeler (Cree) -- When I was thirteen / Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo) -- Falling song / Daniel David Moses (Deleware) -- Loo-wit / Wendy Rose (Hopi-Miwok) -- An afternoon in bright sunlight / Shirley Scott-Bruised Head (Blackfoot) -- Sars's gift / Barbara Smith (Cherokee) -- Self-portrait: Microcosm, or, song of mixed-blood / Robert J. Conely (Cherokee) -- Gaal comes upriver / Mary TallMountain (Koyukon Athabascan) -- The hockey game / Wes Fine Day (Cree).
Reservation blues / Curtis "Shingoose" Jonnie (Ojibway) -- The powwow drum / David Campbell (Arawak) -- Coyoti lost in a city / Henry Michel (Shuswap) -- Charlie / Lee Maracle (Metis-West Coast Salish) -- I lost my talk / Rita Joe (Micmac) -- Your buildings / Rita Joe (Micmac) -- Nipikti the old man carver / Alootook Ipellie (Inuit) -- My father / Maria Campbell (Metis) -- Glooskap visits the king / Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki) -- Reindeer herders / Alice French (Inuit) -- The old man's lazy / Peter Blue Cloud (Mohawk) -- We miss the bus / George Peequaquat (Saulteaux-Ojibway).
Now that the buffalo's gone / Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) -- The moose / Glen Cooper (Cree) -- Running Eagle--woman warrior of the Blackfeet / Beverly Hungry Wolf (Blood) -- What has happened to these working hands? / Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) -- The warriors / Anna Lee Walters (Pawnee-Otoe) -- Son of the sun / Willie Dunn (Micmac) -- The blue hand shield / Kim McLain (Cree) -- The pebble people / Roger Jack (Colville) -- Loss of the sky / Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Crow Creek Sioux) -- Universal soldier / Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) -- Green grass, running water / Thomas King (Cherokee).
The leap / Louise Erdrich (Chippewa) -- Celebrating Christmas in Sandy / Tyance Fiddler (Cree) -- Combing / Gladys Cardiff (Cherokee) -- Homecooking / Elizabeth Woody (Warm Springs-Wasco-Navajo) -- My father's song / Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo) -- Artifacts / Frank Conibear (West Coast Salish) -- Grandfather bear / Earth Elder (Saulteaux) -- Moose to moccasins / Madeline Katt Theriault (Ojibway) -- The story of Payepot / Abel Watetch (Plains Cree) -- I'm making you up / Chrystos (Menominee) -- History lesson / Jeannette C. Armstrong (Okanagan) -- Weddings / Shirley Bear (Cree).
The last word / Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki) -- Wesakachak and the geese / Jackson Beardy (Cree).
IRL by
Poetry. Native American Studies. LGBT Studies. IRL is a sweaty, summertime poem composed like a long text message, rooted in the epic tradition of A.R. Ammons, ancient Kumeyaay Bird Songs, and Beyonc#65533;'s visual albums. It follows Teebs, a reservation-born, queer NDN weirdo, trying to figure out his impulses/desires/history in the midst of Brooklyn rooftops, privacy in the age of the Internet, street harassment, suicide, boys boys boys, literature, colonialism, religion, leaving one's 20s, and a love/hate relationship with English. He's plagued by an indecision, unsure of which obsessions, attractions, and impulses are essentially his, and which are the result of Christian conversion, hetero- patriarchal/colonialist white supremacy, homophobia, Bacardi, gummy candy, and not getting laid. IRL asks, what happens to a modern, queer indigenous person a few generations after his ancestors were alienated from their language, their religion, and their history? Teebs feels compelled towards "boys, burgers, booze," though he begins to suspect there is perhaps a more ancient goddess calling to him behind art, behind music, behind poetry. "Pico's brilliant, funny, and musical book-length debut...channel[s] a rush of Internet slang and emoticons, run-on ramblings and sentence fragments, and poppy lyrical bursts...Pico's skillful rendering of Teeb's coming-of-age attempts to create a cohesive identity out of his many selves proves to be entertaining, enlightening, and utterly relatable in the age of the smartphone."—Publishers Weekly Starred Review "Tommy Pico's epic poem is sad and funny and honest and wickedly clever with rhymes and rhythms. It is an utterly original aboriginal look at the world. I love it."—Sherman Alexie "On the narrowing frontier between song & speech, memory & oblivion, future & no future, Native & American, IRL is Heraclitan, a river of text and sweat, whipping worlds into the silence of white pages: a new masterpiece. And a new kind of masterpiece. It's a lyric epic of desire whose hero renounces heroism. & it's not he who voyages out in search of a world, but rather the devastated worlds in his own blood that seek him out, to mourn them. I said epic of desire and I meant it: desire of every kind, for the infinite & the proximate, the fucking trite & the tried-and- true— it's also a gorgeous monument, an act of memory for the future of all longing, for the fact of roots and the need for them, decolonizing poesis from the root without for one second the condescension of even the notion of safety. For the poem is also deeply canny, and weary; it knows 'There is no post-colonial / America' and yet— the poem keeps pushing out from under history, out beyond the poem's own billion negations, into a space both beyond identity and deep with it."—Ariana Reines