Weaving sundown in a scarlet light : fifty poems for fifty years /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's fifty years as a poet.

Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy Harjo has been praised for her "warm, oracular voice" (John Freeman, Boston Globe ) that speaks "from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all" (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR). Her poems are musical, intimate, political, and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love.

In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo's inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth. As evidenced in this transcendent collection, Joy Harjo's "poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times" (Sandra Cisneros, Millions ).

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. xi)
• The Last Song (p. 1)
• Are You Still There? (p. 2)
• Anchorage (p. 3)
• For Alva Benson, and for Those Who Have Learned to Speak (p. 5)
• The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth-Floor Window (p. 7)
• Remember (p. 10)
• New Orleans (p. 11)
• She Had Some Horses (p. 14)
• I Give You Back (p. 17)
• My House Is the Red Earth (p. 19)
• Grace (p. 20)
• Deer Dancer (p. 21)
• For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Whose Spirit Is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (p. 24)
• Bird (p. 26)
• Rainy Dawn (p. 28)
• Santa Fe (p. 29)
• Eagle Poem (p. 30)
• The Creation Story (p. 31)
• A Postcolonial Tale (p. 33)
• The Dawn Appears with Butterflies (p. 35)
• Perhaps the World Ends Here (p. 38)
• A Map to the Next World (p. 40)
• Emergence (p. 43)
• The Path to the Milky Way Leads Through Los Angeles (p. 45)
• Equinox (p. 47)
• It's Raining in Honolulu (p. 48)
• When the World as We Knew It Ended (p. 49)
• For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet (p. 51)
• Rahbit Is Up to Tricks (p. 54)
• No (p. 56)
• This Morning I Pray for My Enemies (p. 58)
• Praise the Rain (p. 59)
• Speaking Tree (p. 60)
• Fall Song (p. 62)
• Sunrise (p. 63)
• Break My Heart (p. 64)
• Washing My Mother's Body (p. 66)
• How to Write a Poem in a Time of War (p. 71)
• Running (p. 75)
• My Man's Feet (p. 77)
• Tobacco Origin Story (p. 79)
• Redbird Love (p. 81)
• An American Sunrise (p. 83)
• Frog in a Dry River (p. 84)
• Prepare (p. 86)
• The Life of Beauty (p. 88)
• How Love Blows Through the Trees (p. 90)
• Sundown Walks to the Edge of the Story (p. 92)
• Somewhere (p. 94)
• Without (p. 97)
• Notes (p. 99)
• Acknowledgments (p. 125)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A former three-time U.S. Poet Laureate, Harjo celebrates her 50th year as a writer by gathering 50 of her best poems in this career-spanning volume. Powerful, personal, and deeply spiritual, these are the poems of a prophet, and as with the words of the greatest prophets, they transcend both category and culture, speaking with an awe-inspiring authority as they draw on Harjo's heritage as a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. "i want to go back / to New Mexico// it is the only way i know how to breathe" says the opening poem, while the closing poem observes "We will find each other again in a timeless weave of breathing." Here are poems that have inspired readers and poets to see the world anew and listen to the unheard stories all around them. As a sampling of her work, this slender volume is a great companion to 2002's How We Became Human. Like that volume, it ends with a lengthy section of notes about the inspiration and creation of each poem that sheds light on Harjo's career, her passions, and the people she loves, allowing readers to see even favorite and familiar poems with new eyes. VERDICT Harjo is a national treasure, perhaps even a national resource, and this important book is an essential addition to contemporary poetry collections everywhere.--Herman Sutter

Publishers Weekly Review

Harjo's patient guidance, mastery of form, and emotional depth are on dazzling display in these 50 poems drawing from 50 years of her poetry career. Her sensitivity toward the human experience is everywhere evident, especially in "Bird" (for jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker), in which she writes, "I've always had a theory that some of us/ are born with nerve endings longer than our bodies," arriving at an indelible insight: "All poets/ understand the final uselessness of words. We are chords to/ other chords to other chords, if we're lucky, to melody." She revisits this idea in "Creation Story," remarking, "I am ashamed/ I never had the words/ to carry a friend from her death/ to the stars/ correctly.// Or the words to keep/ my people safe/ from drought/ or gunshot." "Eagle Poem" captures Harjo's interest in the natural world and cycles, opening, "To pray you open your whole self/ To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon/ To one whole voice that is you." Harjo connects the human family, and the earthly and spiritual realms, in poems that sparkle with generosity and brilliance. (Nov.)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections and two memoirs, most recently Poet Warrior. The recipient of the 2023 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.