New Poets of Native Nations by Heid E. Erdrich

New Poets of Native Nations Reviews

• 
  Michael

  An anthology without a theme, New Poets of Native Nations features twenty-one poets of Native nations whose first books were published after the year 2000. Erdrich notes in her introduction that many of the selected poems happen to share a few common features: "uses of indigenous languages, hybrid styles, and allusions to or direct mentions of other writers from Native nations." The editor's aim, though, was to spotlight variety, not define a shared cultural context for all Native poets, and the poems collected here really do encompass a wide range of styles and subjects. Favorite poets included Tommy Pico, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Cedar Sigo, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and dg nanouk okpik.
• 
  Spencer Orey

  These collections are always such a mix. I liked a lot of the poems and thought there were some great connections between the different poems and poets. That said, the poems here are heavy and mostly pretty dour, and I had expected more of a range of tone. I guess don't expect to laugh much when reading these. But there are great treasures scattered in there. And it was cool to find out about so many poets
• 
  Bri

  This book holds an impressively vast selection of Native poetry. Absolutely gorgeous writing. Poets whose work really stood out to me are Tommy Pico, Karenne Wood, Cedar Sigo, and Janet McAdams.
• 
  Adam Brodnax

  in the most equitable fashion, this collection of native poems bring forth so many diverse narratives in such raw unfiltered writing
• 
  Cheryl

  Nimbawaadaan akiing
  I dream a world
  atemagag biinaagami
  of clean water
  gete-mitigoog
  ancient trees
  gaye gwekaanimad
  and changing winds.
  Nimbawaadaan akiing
  I dream a world
  izhi-mikwendamang
  of ones who remember
  nandagikenindamang gaye
  who seek the truth and
  maamwidebwe’endamang waabang
  believe in tomorrow together.
  
  GWEN NELL WESTERMAN
  Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate and Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma
  
  Another set of beautiful poems from modern Indigenous poets ranging far and wide, and each poet touches on themes that you expect, and more that you can’t, because you weren’t raised/taught to think differently, so you learn something in every poem. I can’t stress that enough and it is why I am reading so much indigenous literature lately; it is necessary to continue to learn and grow to be able to transcend the way you have learned and grown to get here. Here are some keys to that new, wider, brighter, deeper knowledge.
  
  TACEY M ATSITTY
  Diné, is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People)
  NIGHTSONG
  …
  In this falling
  Moment, cities
  Sink into the depths,
  
  Drown. The earth
  Face carried up and
  
  Away in the current of
  A whirlwind, where water
  
  And mountains hide
  In deep blue. What faces
  
  Bring: a reservoir filled,
  Following the night
  
  When day fell into day,
  Soon followed by night
  
  Into night to night
  Thrice with no moon
  
  Thrice with no flame-
  Kept in the thick thick.
  
  ELEGY FOR YUCCA FRUIT WOMAN
  
  Without me, she said. Go-
  I’m going to the rock
  That once had wings. My life
  Rolls like rock clods
  Down a volcanic throat, circling
  The tips of big winds beneath.
  
  To take air,
  Those inward whooshes as if blessing
  Oneself…
  
  DOWNPOUR
  
  I asked him down here
  …
  Where we wait for deluge, but it never comes
  …
  I can’t sing over the onrush of falling water
  …
  Lick cloudburst, the way I want
  …
  Down here, I speak with a tongue of cedar: bark and kindle
  …
  He says rain and I go beautifully together
  
  LAYLI LONG SOLDIER
  OGLALA LAKOTA
  
  OBLIGATIONS 2
  As we
  
  embrace resist
  
  the future the present the past
  
  we work we struggle we begin we fail
  
  to understand to find to unbraid to accept to question
  
  the grief the grief the grief the grief
  
  we shift we wield we bury
  
  into light as ash
  
  across our faces
  
  
  WHEREAS I DID NOT DESIRE
  WHEREAS I did not desire in childhood to be a part of this
  but desired most of all to be a part. A piece combined with
  others to make up a whole. Some but not all of something.
  In Lakota it’s onspa, a piece or part of anything. Like the
  creek trickling behind my aunt’s house where Uncle built her
  a bridge to cross from bank to bank … I
  walk out remembering that for millennia we have called
  ourselves Lakota meaning friend or ally. This relationship
  to the other. Some but not all, still our piece to everything.
  
  When I
  
  was young grew older
  
  I learned from I taught I relied on
  
  my mother my father my children my grandchildren
  
  how reasons where to whom always
  
  to speak to speak to speak to speak
  
  truthfully carefully meaningfully
  
  digging stones threading grasses
  
  from our chests
  
  MARGARET NOODIN (Giiwedinoodin)
  Lake Superior Chippewa, Grand Portage Band
  Ojibwe (Anishinaabemowin)language
  William Making Snowshoes
  Ojibwe Version
  
  Winiiam Aagimeke
  Ge-maajimamaangadepon
  giizis ishpaagoozid, ishpaagonagaag
  agwajiing
  mii dash inaaginang ezhi-inendang
  naagadawendang debwemigag
  gaye gaawiin debwesiinog
  Skadi'an gaye Bakewizian
  naagadawenimaad
  ezhi-giibabaamaagimenid.
  Chiwenipanad onji-gii aagimiked
  miigwechwi'aad aagimakoon
  waazhaabiid miidash waaginaang,
  aazheyaajimowinan gashka'oodeg
  gaa nisidotamang inkamigag
  gete-aadizookaanag gashka'oozowaad
  ezhi-gizhemanidoo naago'idizod.
  Apii gii giizhiitaad anokiid gaye
  bengoziwaad
  giizikaang makazinan mii
  biizikawaad agimag
  mii bineshiinhgaazod
  ji-babaamikawed
  jiimaanbii'ang bagakaagonagaa
  epiichi baazhida'ang ziibiwan
  jiimaanbii'aad maazikaamikwe
  gaye ode'eng zhawenimaad.
  
  ENGLISH version:
  As frozen flakes fell in clusters
  sun high in the sky, snow deep
  outside
  he began to bend his thoughts
  considering what is true
  and what is not
  considering Skadi and
  Pukwiss
  and the way they walked on the snow.
  Because it was simplest, he made snowshoes
  thanked the white ash
  cut the laces and bent the wood,
  all the back stories tangling
  what we understand happened
  all the teaching tales tangling
  the way the Creator is revealed.
  When his work was done and they
  were dry
  he took off his moccasins, put on
  the snowshoes
  going out to leave tracks light
  as a bird
  writing canoe shapes in the bright snow
  as he walked over rivers
  writing kiss shapes on the earth
  and in the center of the blessed.
  
  WHAT THE PEEPERS SAY
  after the winter waiting
  no longer half-
  frozen by design
  our calling becomes all calling.
  
  under the rippling bark
  peepers have thawed
  to crawl into the swamp where
  my calling becomes your calling.
  
  a seismic seiche
  a synaptic snowstorms
  of springtime repetition and
  your calling becomes my calling.
  
  as we drift away on our echoes
  we are the details
  we are the distance and
  all calling becomes our calling.
  
  Nimbawaadaan Akiing / I Dream a World
  Nimbawaadaan akiing
  I dream a world
  atemagag biinaagami
  of clean water
  gete-mitigoog
  ancient trees
  gaye gwekaanimad
  and changing winds.
  Nimbawaadaan akiing
  I dream a world
  izhi-mikwendamang
  of ones who remember
  nandagikenindamang gaye
  who seek the truth and
  maamwidebwe’endamang waabang
  believe in tomorrow together.
  Nimbawaadaan akiing
  I dream a world
  izhi-biimiskobideg giizhigong
  where our path in the sky
  waabandamang naasaab
  can be seen as clearly as
  gaa-izhi-niibawid wiijibemaadizid
  the place where our neighbor once stood.
  GWEN NELL WESTERMAN
  Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate and Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma
  
  GENETIC CODE
  On the edge of a dream,
  the songs came.
  condensed from the fog,
  like dewdrops on cattails,
  they formed perfectly clear.
  Whispering through leaves,
  heavy voices rise up.
  drift beyond night
  toward the silent dawn,
  and sing.
  Heyta ehanna ded untipi
  Heun he ohinni unkiksuyapi
  Anpetu dena ded untipi
  Heca ohinn undowanpi kte.
  Always on still morning air,
  they come,
  connected by
  memories and
  song.
  
  JENNIFER ELISE FOERSTER
  Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma
  
  LEAVING TULSA
  Grandma potted a cedar sapling
  I could take on the road for luck.
  She used the bark for heart lesions
  doctors couldn’t explain.
  To her, they were maps, traces of home,
  the Milky Way, where she’s going, she said.
  …
  up here, parallel to the median
  with a vista of mesas’ weavings,
  the sky a belt of blue and white beadwork,
  I see our hundred and sixty acres
  stamped on God’s forsaken country.
  
  BIRTHMARK
  
  Homeland? on my ankle: claw
  or fin. Mud? No. I was born with it.
  A bit of dirt and I stole it back.
  …
  you will never know Grief. Deep,
  as if grief were some
  
  body of water. I begin. to teach myself
  to swim. Inside a continent.
  …
  I travel often without a map.
  found a garden inside of a wall
  made of river stones.
  …
  What is your language?
  Nouns doing something to something
  
  else. Verb: what you contain
  between them. A place
  
  to pass through until I forget
  I had the map of that place
  to begin with. born with it,
  a stain on the skin. a garden
  
  always flowering,
  petals dropping. with them
  I go down rapids.
  
  CHIMERA
  
  I have traveled this continent
  for no other reason but to search
  for evidence of your existence.
  
  In the stars, America, your highway
  vanishes. Black moths are captured
  in headlights and swallowed.
  In the beginning, you had said,
  we were cracked against the sky.
  Now I read the highway
  for the fall-out of your name
  as you step again into the passing land,
  turn to the illuminated crest of hill
  where a line of traffic outlines the dark-
  
  in your silhouette I can still see myself
  as a child, waiting for a car
  to swerve around the corner.
  
  But no car came that afternoon.
  I stood there in the patient street,
  my summer dress rippling.
  
  dg nanouk okpik
  Inupiaq-Inuit
  
  A YEAR DOT
  
  (qin) dim sum equivalent to: dot, speck heart
  
  stone piled on stone I finished my meal.
  in this early sunrise I see shadows where a cairn of rocks
  used to stack in the direction of eastern light.
  …
  Milkweed grows on the side of the road in ditches,
  reminiscent of professor’s soft words, amazing the brilliant,
  contemplation and thought pattern as you learn, slowly.
  
  In my body neuron-zipped words and more words.
  My lexicon building from nothing to something good.
  embossed tattoos like small notes on sheet music.
  …
  to learn, you must be open, diligent, and willing to be an individual.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  NATALIE DIAZ
  Mojave, enrolled member of Gila River Indian Community
  
  'THE FIRST WATER IS THE BODY' (AN EXTRACT)
  
  The Colorado River is the most endangered river in the United States—
  also, it is a part of my body.
  
  I carry a river. It is who I am: ‘Aha Makav. This is not metaphor.
  
  When a Mojave says, Inyech ‘Aha Makavch ithuum, we are saying our name.
  We are telling a story of our existence. The river runs through the middle
  of my body.
  
  So far, I have said the word river in every stanza. I don’t want to waste water.
  I must preserve the river in my body.
  
  In future stanzas, I will try to be more conservative
  
  +
  
  The Spanish called us, Mojave. Colorado, the name they gave our river be
  -cause it was silt-red-thick.
  
  Natives have been called red forever. I have never met a red Native, not
  even on my reservation, not even at the National Museum of the American
  Indian, not even at the largest powwow in Parker, Arizona.
  
  I live in the desert along a dammed blue river. The only red people I’ve seen
  are white tourists sunburned after staying out on the water too long.
  
  =
  
  ‘Aha Makav is the true name of our people, given to us by our Creator who
  loosed the river from the earth and built it into our living bodies.
  
  Translated into English, ‘Aha Makav means the river runs through the
  middle of our body, the same way it runs through the middle of our land.
  
  This is a poor translation, like all translations.
  In American minds, the logic of this image will lend itself to surrealism or magical realism—
  Americans prefer a magical red Indian, or a shaman, or a fake Indian in a red dress, over a real native. Even a real native carrying the dangerous and heavy blues of a river in her body.
  What threatens white people is often dismissed as myth.
  I have never been true in America. America is my myth.
  ~
  Derrida says, Every text remains in mourning until it is translated.
  When Mojaves say the word for tears, we return to our word for river, as if our river were flowing from our eyes. A great weeping, is how you might translate it. Or, a river of grief.
  But who is this translation for? And will they come to my language’s four-night funeral to grieve what has been lost in my efforts at translation? When they have drunk dry my river will they join the mourning procession across our bleached desert?
  The word for drought is different across many languages and lands.
  The ache of thirst, though, translates to all bodies along the same paths—the tongue and the throat. No matter what language you speak, no matter the color of your skin.
  ~
  We carry the river, its body of water, in our body.
  I do not mean to imply a visual relationship. Such as: a native woman on her knees holding a box of Land O’Lakes butter whose label has a picture of a native woman on her knees holding a box of Land O’Lakes butter whose label has a picture of a native woman on her knees . . .
  We carry the river, its body of water, in our body. I do not mean to invoke the Droste effect.
  I mean river as a verb. A happening. It is moving within me right now.
  ~
  This is not juxtaposition. Body and water are not two unlike things—they are more than close together or side by side. They are same—body, being, energy, prayer, current, motion, medicine.
  This knowing comes from acknowledging the human body has more than six senses. The body is beyond six senses. Is sensual. Is always an ecstatic state of energy, is always on the verge of praying, or entering any river of movement.
  Energy is a moving like a river moving my moving body.
  ~
  In Mojave thinking, body and land are the same. The words are separated only by letters: ’iimat for body, ’amat for land. In conversation, we often use a shortened form for each: mat-. Unless you know the context of a conversation, you might not know if we are speaking about our body or our land. You might not know which has been injured, which is remembering, which is alive, which was dreamed, which needs care, which has vanished.
  If I say, My river is disappearing, do I also mean, My people are disappearing?
  ~
  How can I translate—not in words but in belief—that a river is a body, as alive as you or I, that there can be no life without it?
  ~
  John Berger wrote true translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal.
  Between the English translation I offered, and the urging I felt to first type ’Aha Makav in the lines above, is not the point where this story ends or begins.
  We must go to the place before those two points—we must go to the third place that is the river.
  We must go to the point of the lance our creator stabbed into the earth, and the first river bursting from that clay body into mine. We must submerge beneath those once warm red waters now channeled-blue and cool, the current’s endless yards of emerald silk wrapping the body and moving it, swift enough to take life or give it.
  We must go until we smell the black-root-wet anchoring the river’s mud banks.
  ~
  What is this third point, this place beyond the surface, if not the deep-cut and crooked bone-bed where the Colorado River runs—like a one thousand four hundred and fifty mile thirst—into and through a body?
  Berger called it the pre-verbal. Pre-verbal as in the body when the body was more than body. Before it could name itself body and be limited to the space body indicated.
  Pre-verbal is the place where the body was yet a green-blue energy greening, greened, and bluing the stone, the floodwaters, the razorback fish, the beetle, and the cottonwoods’ and willows’ shaded shadows.
  Pre-verbal was when the body was more than a body and possible.
  One of its possibilities was to hold a river within it.
  ~
  A river is a body of water. It has a foot, an elbow, a mouth. It runs. It lies in a bed. It can make you good. It remembers everything.
  ~
  America is a land of bad math and science: the Right believes Rapture will save them from the violence they are delivering upon the earth and water; the Left believes technology, the same technology wrecking the earth and water, will save them from the wreckage or help them build a new world on Mars.
  ~
  If I was created to hold the Colorado River, to carry its rushing inside me, how can I say who I am if the river is gone?
  What does ’Aha Makav mean if the river is emptied to the skeleton of its fish and the miniature sand dunes of its dry silten beds?
  If the river is a ghost, am I?
  Unsoothable thirst is one type of haunting.
  ~
  A phrase popular or more known to non-natives during the Standing Rock encampment was, Water is the first medicine. It is true.
  Where I come from we cleanse ourselves in the river. Not like a bath with soap. I mean: the water makes us strong and able to move forward into what is set before us to do with good energy.
  We cannot live good, we cannot live at all, without water.
  If we poison and use up our water, how will we cleanse ourselves of these sins?
  ~
  To thirst and to drink is how one knows they are alive, and grateful.
  To thirst and then not drink is . . .
  ~
  If your builder could place a small red bird in your chest to beat as your heart, is it so hard for you to picture the blue river hurtling inside the slow muscled curves of my long body? Is it too difficult to believe it is as sacred as a breath or a star or a sidewinder or your own mother or your lover?
  If I could convince you, would our brown bodies and our blue rivers be more loved and less ruined?
  The Whanganui River in New Zealand now has the same legal rights of a human being. In India, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers now have the same legal status of a human being. Slovenia’s constitution now declares access to clean drinking water to be a national human right. While in the US, we are tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting and kenneling natives who are trying to protect their water from pollution and contamination at Standing Rock in North Dakota. We have yet to discover what the effects of lead-contaminated water will be on the children of Flint, Michigan, who have been drinking it for years.
  ~
  We think of our bodies as being all that we are: I am my body. This thinking helps us disrespect water, air, land, one another. But water is not external from our body, our self.
  My Elder says: Cut off your ear, and you will live. Cut off your hand, you will live. Cut off your leg, you can still live. Cut off our water: we will not live more than a week.
  The water we drink, like the air we breathe, is not a part of our body but is our body. What we do to one—to the body, to the water—we do to the other.
  ~
  Toni Morrison writes, All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Back to the body of earth, of flesh, back to the mouth, the throat, back to the womb, back to the heart, to its blood, back to our grief, back back back to when we were more than we have lately become.
  Will we soon remember from where we’ve come? The water.
  And once remembered, will we return to that first water, and in doing so return to ourselves, to each other, better and cleaner?
  Do you think the water will forget what we have done, what we continue to do?
• 
  Amber Whittle

  Favorites:
  Mazinbii’amawaan/ Sending Messages by Margaret Noodin
  Quarter Strain by Laura Da’
  Linear Process by Gwen Nell Westerman
  Birthmark by Jennifer Elise Foerster
  Blood Moon Triptych by Jennifer Elise Foerster
  Dome Riddle by Natalie Diaz
  American Arithmetic by Natalie Diaz
  (First Trimester) by Craig Santos Perez
  Dear Sonny: by Gordon Henry, Jr
  Casualties by M L Smoker
  The Poet I Wish I Was by Karenne Wood
• 
  Kristin Boldon

  This book's multiplicity of voices taught me so much. I am thankful for the privilege of reading this book. Savoring it a poem a day was a wonderful experience.
• 
  Helen B

  270 pages of spectacular poems
• 
  Alyssa Poulin

  A great way to dip your toes into modern indigenous poetry. I found a few poets i really liked and was able to follow them on Instagram for further reading. Truthfully, I didn't read every poem in the book but ended up skimming toward the end. That's just what happens with me and poetry. I guess I have a short attention span when it comes to poetry and anthologies.
• 
  Craig Werner

  The poems in this anthology, the most important gathering of Native American poetry in a long time, testify to the truth--obvious if you've been in touch with many indigenous people--that there's no one way to be, or think, or write "native," or to use Tommy Pico's amusing coinage, NDN. Editor Heid E. Erdrich made the decision to limit the collection to poets who published their first volume after 2000, which isn't quite identical with "younger" poets; LeAnn Howe and Gordon Henry have both been publishing fiction for quite a while longer. While there were a few poets who met the criteria I would have liked to have seen included--Orlando White comes to mind--it's an impressive and convincing collection.
  
  Among the central concerns that echo and recur are the resistance to essentialized ideas of identity; the reality of traumas grounded in tribally specific experiences of dispossession; the emerging sense of global indigeneity(ies) reflected in the inclusion of poets from the Arctic, Guam and Hawai'i; and, perhaps most centrally, the drive to (re) establish connections with tribal languages. By my count, ten of the 21 poets incorporate tribal languages into their poetry in ways that go beyond simple allusion.
  
  Erdrich's choice of poems by the half dozen or so poets whose work I know reasonably well were good ones; Lila LongSoldier, dg nano okapik, and Tommy Pico are particularly well represented. If I'd been selecting poems from Natlie Diaz's brilliant collection My Brother Was an Aztec, I would have chosen some of the more searing personal poems, but it would have been difficult to chose ones that work equally well out of the book's context.
  
  There were many poems that caught my attention, but if you want to graze for a sampling, I'd recommend starting with some of these:
  Layli Long Soldier, 38, Whereas I Did Not Desire in Childhood
  Tommy Pico, from IRL, from Nature Poem
  Gwen Nedll Wesaterman, Theory Doesn't Live Here
  Jennifer Elise Foerster, Birthmark
  Natalie Diaz, Dome Riddle
  dg nanok opik, Her/My Arctic Corpse Whale; Dog Moon Night at Noatak
  Julian Talamantez Brolaski, As the Owl Augurs; Stonewall to Standing Rock
  Sy Hoahwah,, Anchor Screws of Culture; Before We Are Eatern
  M.L. Smoker, Crosscurrents; Equilibrium
  Cedar Sigo, Things to Do in Suquamish
  Karenne Wood, My Standard Response
  Eric Gansworth, A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulminary Function
  Janet MacAdams, Leaving the Old Gods
• 
  Jack

  I live in the United Kingdom. I'm privileged. I don't have ancestors who were erased from history in the name of 'progress'. I had never, until reading this anthology ever really thought about the fading and forgotten nations, tribes and people due to colonization. Having read this book I will never forget them.
  
  The anthology includes 21 native poets from around the world. Their works are raw, emotive and capture the modern plight of native people like only they can. Stylistically these poets are pole apart but their messages have far more commonality than just their native descendants. These poets have conveyed historical and present plight and shown how the former is just as raw as the latter.
  
  I implore everyone to read this. Whether you don't normally read poetry or care for it. This anthology is far more than just poetry. It is eye opening, an emotional tour-de-force and is one of the most important works this side of millennium.
• 
  Joe

  When explaining part of the motivation for this anthology, the editor, Heid E. Erdrich points to Dean Rader's 2017 observation "That a comprehensive anthology of Indigenous American poetry has not been published since 1988 is utterly depressing." (xiii). Heid ends this 30+ year silence with just a fantastic gathering. Trevino L. Brings Plenty and dg nanouk okpik's work was revelatory. Will be coming back to Natalie Diaz's "The First Water Is the Body" and Layli Long Soldier's "38," among others.
• 
  Mark

  There were a few highlights for me in this collection but not as many as I would have liked. I have really admired Native American poetry in the past but few of these really spoke to me. Maybe others will feel differently, so if you are curious give it a try.
• 
  Sarah Esh

  An important collection of poetry that highlights up-and-coming Indigenous poets, this is a must-read for any poetry lover.
  
  It's hard to write a review about an anthology, so I won't attempt to. Suffice to say that there is power in anthologizing texts, and the significance of this collection cannot be understated. The only downside is the lack of poets from New England and the North East - for those writers, go to Dawnland Voices.
• 
  Abby Johnson

  Wow. These poems are powerful and challenging and important. This is a great place to start with modern Native American poets - you'll discover plenty of amazing authors here.
• 
  Jillian

  M.L. Smoker's work was my favorite.
• 
  Krista Stevens

  Great collection - wow.
  
  My favorites: "38" by Layli Long Soldier, "Not Just Anyone Can Have One" by Trevino L. Brings Plenty, "The First Water is the Body" and "American Arithmetic" by Natalie Diaz, "Linear Process" by Gwen Nell Westerman.
• 
  Antonio Delgado

  An amazing collection. It makes you to explore these poet’s work beyond this selection and other Native Nation poets.
• 
  Lynn

  If you enjoy poetry you should like this - a variety of topics, individuals and viewpoints, all tied together simply by the fact of the poets’ being Native Americans in the 21st century.
• 
  Marie Kos

  Layli Long Soldier's work was some of my favorite in this collection. Her work was particularly heartfelt and creative in form. However, any one of these artists' work would be enjoyed by even a casual poetry fan. The clear organization and presentation of this collection makes it a joy to give ear to the varying voices of America's indigenous people. Many thanks to Heid E. Erdrich, a wonderful poet in her own right, for collecting these voices into one volume.
• 
  Elizabeth

  While I wasn't blown away by this collection like some reviewers were, I really appreciate its existence -- selections from 21 Native poets whose first book was published in the 21st century (i.e., in 2000 or later). And the backmatter gives the included poets the opportunity to name poets who have mentored/influenced them as well as poets they think people should be reading.
  
  The only poet in this collection I already knew was Layli Long Soldier. It was interesting reading excerpts from
  WHEREAS, knowing the larger work it was a part of.
  
  I'm interested to read more of Tommy Pico's work. I suppose it's unsurprising that queer young folks are who I'm most drawn to. Billy-Ray Belcourt isn't in this anthology, but he's next on my to-read list.
  
  Pico is not actually the only queer author in this collection, huzzah. Julian Talamantez Brolaski is also included -- and there might be other queer poets who didn't flag that element of their identity in their bio.
  
  I was also really into some of Craig Santos Perez' poems about Guam (Guåhan) -- "Lisiensan Ga'lago" from from unincorporated territory [hacha] and "The Legends of Juan Malo [a Malologue]" from from unincorporated territory [lukao].
  
  It's really easy for so many of us to only think of the continent when thinking of Native people, so props to Erdrich for including not just Santos Perez but also Brandy Nālani McDougall (of Hawaiian, Chinese, and Scottish descent from the island of Maui).
  
  The collection spans geography (also includes Inupiaq-Inuit poet dg nanouk okpik, for example), poetic style, engagement with Indigenous language and issues of indigeneity, etc. If you don't know any Native poets, this collection is a great place to start.
• 
  Kyla Doll

  I liked this anthology of indigenous poets whose first books came out after 2000. I especially liked the poems of Layli Long Soldier, Tommy Pico, Sy Hoahwah, Brandy Nalani McDougall, and Eric Gansworth. I also liked “Leaving Tulsa” by Jennifer Elise Foerster, “Dome Riddle” and “The First Water Is The Body” by Natalie Diaz, and “Abracadabra, an Abcedarian” and “The Poet I Wish I Was” both by Karenne Wood. The Author Notes section in the back is interesting too, detailing the poets’ routes to publication, mentors, and recommendations for other indigenous poets to read.
• 
  Kelly

  I finally picked up a book of poems! This new one caught me eye because it was 250 pages and because it featured Native Nation poets. Most of these were highly read-able! (I even enjoyed some, which is high praise for poetry, coming from me). The book features 21 poets. My favorites were by Tommy Pico--who writes in chatty texting and instant message vernacular but in a really meaningful way--Jennifer Elise Foerster, whose imagery is clear and compelling, and Laura Da', whose poem "Passive Voice" is a dagger. Recommended for poets and those interested in Native studies.
• 
  sarah

  Amazing. I’m in awe of this collection. Required reading.
• 
  Cara (Wilde Book Garden)

  CW: Trauma, depression, references to suicide or suicidal ideation, grief, colonization, racism, miscarriage, references to residential schools
• 
  Nadine in NY Jones

  I loved Erdrich's collection (
  Little Big Bully) and so I was really looking forward to this anthology, thinking if I like the author's own writing I would also like the selections the author made. But that didn't work out for me. I decided to read one poet every day or so (a few days I skipped it). There were times when I started to wonder if perhaps I should just stop reading poetry all together. I did find four authors that I would like to read more from:
  Laura Da',
  M.L. Smoker,
  Karenne Wood, &
  Janet McAdams, so I suppose I should count that as an overall "win."
  
  
  

  Crosscurrent
  BY M.L. SMOKER
  For James Welch
  
  The first harvest of wheat in flatlands
  along the Milk startled me into thoughts of you
  and this place we both remember and also forget as home.
  Maybe it was the familiarity or maybe it was my own
  need to ask if you have ever regretted leaving.
  What bends, what gives?
  And have you ever missed this wind?—it has now
  grown warm with late summer, but soon
  it will be as dangerous as the bobcat stalking calves
  and pets just south of the river.
  Men take out their dogs, a case of beer and wait
  in their pickups for dawn, for a chance with their rifles.
  They don’t understand that she isn’t going to make
  any mistakes. With winter my need for an answer
  grows more desperate and there are only four roads out.
  One is the same cat hunters drive with mannish glory
  and return along, gun still oil-shined and unshot.
  Another goes deeper into Assiniboine territory:
  This is the one I should talk myself into taking next.
  I haven’t much traveled the third except to visit
  a hospital where, after the first time,
  my mother had refused chemotherapy.
  And the last road you know as well as I do—
  past the coral-painted Catholic church, its doors
  long ago sealed shut to the mouth of Mission Canyon,
  then south just a ways, to where the Rockies cut open
  and forgive. There you and I are on the ascent.
  After that, the arrival is what matters most.
   
  Amoroleck's Words
  Karenne Wood
  
  

  You can't take a man's words.
  They are his even as the land
  is taken away
  where another man
  builds his house.
  —Linda Hogan

  
  
  You must have been a sight, Captain John Smith,
  as your dugout approached,
  with Jamestown's men
  sporting plumed hats,
  poufed knickers, beards, stockings,
  funny little shoes.
  You might have looked, to us,
  well,
  uncivilized.
  We fought you, we know,
  because you wrote it down.
  One man was left behind. Wounded.
  At your mercy. Among your shining goods—
  mirrors, knives, firearms, glass beads—
  Where was mercy? Maybe you left it
  in England. Eager to learn, Captain Smith,
  you asked about the worlds he knew,
  whether there was gold,
  why his people had fought
  when you came to them "in love."
  He told you in his dialect,
  which no one now speaks.
  You recorded his name, his words.
  Not his fate.
  Of all the words our people spoke
  in the year of our Lord 1608,
  only his answer remains:
  "We heard that you were a people
  come from under the world,
  to take our world from us."
   
  
  Leaving the Old Gods
  JANET MCADAMS
  
  I.
  The people who watch me hang my coat
  on a peg at the office don't even know
  about that other life,
  the life when there was you, it,
  however briefly. To them my body
  is a fact casual as the weather.
  I could tell them:
  That day it rained
  the way it rains in the New World.
  Leaves struck the window like daggers.
  I didn't think about God
  but the ones we used to worship
  the ones who want your heart still
  beating, who load you with gold
  and lure you to sleep
  deep in the cenote.
  
  II.
  A girl, he said, and I nodded
  though we couldn't have known.
  I would have left him then
  for ten thousand pesos.
  I don't know what world you inhabit,
  swimming there, baby, not-baby,
  part of my body, not me,
  swept aside like locks of hair
  or toenail parings.
  It's ten years today
  and you who were never alive
  pull a face in the leaves
  of jacaranda, the only tree
  that lives outside my window.
  It must be your voice
  whistling through the office window,
  though I can't understand your words.
  Comfort or accusation,
  I can't understand your words.