An American Sunrise

Description

A nationally best-selling volume of wise, powerful poetry from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. Full of celebration, crisis, brokenness and healing. Harjo, though very much a poet of America, extracts from her own personal and cultural touchstones a more galactal understanding of the world, and her poems become richer for it. Rich and deeply engaging, creates bridges of understanding while reminding readers to face and remember the past. [Joy Harjo’s] poems are accessible and easy to read, but making them no less penetrating and powerful, spoken from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all.… [A] stark reminder of what poetry is for and what it can do. [ ] touched me to the marrow. A powerful reminder as to why [Joy] Harjo’s voice is so at home everywhere.… When a poet scales her gaze so grandly, something strange and miraculous happens to poetry. It opens up and becomes more than a mere literary device, it becomes a delivery system of wonder.… Harjo’s goal as a poet has been to wake us up, to talk to us as if there is nothing so natural as singing. It is impossible to read this beautiful book and not wonder if our world would be a little better if more of us remembered how. While the subject matter of her new poems continuously hits you in the gut, Harjo brings a sense of resilience to that dark history. Radiant.… [A] profound, brilliantly conceived song cycle, celebrating ancestors, present and future generations, historic endurance and fresh beginnings. Reveals glimpses of life in Oklahoma’s Muscogee Creek Nation alongside delicately rendered ruminations on memory, family and healing. [A] resplendent and reverberating new volume.… Harjo’s bracing political perspective is matched by timeless wisdom.… In clarion, incantatory poems that recalibrate heart and mind, Harjo conveys both the endless ripples of loss and the brightening beauty and hope of the sunrise. US