| Title | : | The Radiant Lives of Animals |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0807047929 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780807047927 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 |
| Publication | : | First published October 13, 2020 |
From a celebrated Chickasaw writer, a spiritual meditation, in prose and poetry, on our relationship to the animal world, in an illustrated gift package.
Concerned that human lives and the natural world are too often defined by people who are separated from the land and its inhabitants, Indigenous writer and environmentalist Linda Hogan depicts her own intense relationships with animals as an example we all can follow to heal our souls and reconnect with the spirit of the world. From her modest forest home in Colorado, and venturing throughout the region, especially to her beloved Oklahoma, she introduces us to horses, packrats, snakes, mountain lions, elks, wolves, bees, and so many others whose presence has changed her life. In this illuminating collection of essays and poems, lightly sprinkled with elegant drawings, Hogan draws on many Native nations’ ancient stories and spiritual traditions to show us that the soul exists in those delicate places where the natural world extends into human consciousness—in the mist of morning, the grass that grew a little through the night, the first warmth of this morning’s sunlight. Altogether, this beautifully packaged gift is a reverential reminder for all of us to witness and appreciate the radiant lives of animals.
The Radiant Lives of Animals Reviews
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In The Radiant Lives of Animals, Hogan tells readers of all the beautiful and enchanting workings of nature, primarily from time spent in both Oklahoma and her cabin home in a Colorado valley. Whether it's the mutual love and connection between her horses, her surprising cohabitation with wasps, or incredible observations of the ants, wolves, and more, there is so much radiance of its own packed into this little book. This is not just natural, it's spiritual-- and those two things are often one and the same. These essays have built a nest inside my own heart and spirit. Hogan reminds us of the everyday brilliance of thriving ecosystems when left unchanged by humans.
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Beautifully textured paper and lovely typeface that will make rereading even more happy. I especially liked "Enchanted Bedroom," in which she lets the outdoors in, even living peaceably with wasps and "The Visitant," in which snows and snows bring a hungry elk in to be warily fed.
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I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
This is a wonderful book. Recommended for everyone. -
I cannot recommend this book enough. I would give 10 stars if I can. I think every human being should read this and learn how to become a better animal. Learn how to appreciate even the smallest lives around us. To connect and share. Her words were pure grace, soulful art. I want to meet her and hug her. I want to share with her the burden of being a human. I want to cry with her. I want to care for animals alongside with her and learn from her how to do it as peacefully and gracefully as she does. Such a great mentor and soul Linda Hogan. I wish I read her long ago.
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Truly, there is poetry in all of what Linda Hogan writes. I feel her calm, her passion, her love as details emerge of her home amidst animals. For whatever reason, perhaps, I was born fearful of nature, of the natural world, of the worms and the snakes, the wind and the rain; yet, I felt at peace reading THE RADIANT LIVES OF ANIMALS and know I now look at the world differently, even if I never come to terms with my own phobias.
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Please seek out diverse reviews/reviewers.
I was looking for more poetry, I did read the poems in the book and enjoyed them. “Bear” was my favorite. -
oh my goodness. i had to read this book for one of my GE classes (shoutout Prof Du Plessis) and i only read half of it during the school year so i just decided to finish it up (hence the long ass reading time).
Linda Hogan definitely has a way with words. i LOVE her voice throughout this book and i really like the overall theme she decides to tackle through her metaphorical prose — which is the importance and radiance of the nonhuman life around us. she tackles everything from the lives of horses and wolves to ants, and tbh i really enjoyed the insight and wisdom she provided in her anecdotal stories and poems. they were super eye-opening and it definitely made me pause and think abt and even appreciate the living creatures around me and their contributions to our world and quality of human life.
however, this book was also lowkey hard to get through (hence why i only read like half of it when i took the class) because after a while it starts to feel a bit repetitive. each short story/essay tackles an animal or concept that connects to her overall theme, which is great! but after a while, it feels like i’m reading the same thing with slightly different characters. even after reading half the book, i understood the essence of the book and was basically done with it (as demonstrated by the fact that i was able to write a banger essay abt it despite not reading the whole thing).
i will say that i also really liked how Hogan tied her own Native American heritage and culture within the stories. not only did it make it more personal, but it also made me understand where she was coming from a lot more and made me consider other perspectives on the lives of animals.
i will say, would only recommend if you love nature and animals, because Hogan takes a very strong, idealistic pro-animal stance throughout this (which i loved and found refreshing!) that may not sit well with everyone. -
"The Radiant Lives of Animals" is a collection of essays and poems that highlight Linda Hogan's love of nature and animals. Hogan is arguing that mankind needs to step beyond its current thinking about its relationship with natural ecosystems and embrace a more holistic approach.
"For tribal thinkers, it is the world outside us that creates our humanity and what inhabits us. Alive to processes within and without the human, this is a more humble perception of the world, and one far more steady. Nature is the creator, not the created. The human being is not the center of the environment."
And the sad thing is, western scientists are only recently starting to embrace the facts that indigenous people have learned through centuries of observation.
This book is heartfelt and beautifully written. It is a love letter and a plea. This is one little book that I will definitely be adding to my personal library. -
“The Radiant Life of Animals” is the first book I’ve read by Linda Hogan. I feel profoundly enriched by her insights on the soul being outside of us as well as inside, connecting us to the wisdom of the earth and all of its creatures. I reread some of her passages on horses, foxes, wolves, bears, rattlesnakes and mountain lions over and over. Her descriptions of nonhuman creatures are enticing. I envy her ability to connect with them, to earn their curiosity and a degree of trust. And I admire her acknowledgement to respect their boundaries. “…they need to retain some part of wilderness….wildlife is not meant for us, however we cherish the grace of such presence.”
I love this book and highly recommend it. -
A profound and thoughtful book from one of my favorite authors.
Being mindful of the other species that we share this planet with is not something humanity has done well. Linda Hogan shows us how. -
I should like books like this one. I spend a lot of time in nature, connecting with nature. This book is all about connecting with nature. It's poetic, slow paced, thorough. But I got really bored and could not stand another page of her looking into the eyes of different animals.
The poetry was nice though. -
Linda is a strong native American woman who writes strong words that tell a truth than can connect cultures. Her unflinching fiction helps us understand the non-fiction world by connecting emotions, understated, with facts that reveal the emotion more clearly than emotional words.
In this meditation on the animals she has encountered, mostly in her mountain home where she lives with horses and studies the animal lives around her, she shares moments of grace and acceptance as she encounters wildness and meets it with courageous, kindness and grace. There is the wonder of humming birds moving about her home and coming and going from open windows; the wasps that live in the house and wake her on some morning with a deliberateness that astounds; the moments of meeting an elk face to face in a deep snowy pathway, the cougars than drift past her tiny home. It is prose poetry, admiration for nature and human humility that is sadly rare in our modern world. "Part of caring," she tells us, "is observation." This little book allows us to care more because of her observations. -
What a lovely book this is! Hogan has sprinkled in some poems among the essays about her life in her Colorado cabin, her relationship with the land and the animals she shares it with. You could say the essays are also about re-minding:
We need to have changed minds, to look at new ways of thinking about our shared world. We need revised neural pathways, synapses connecting new understandings of where we stand within the whole of creation.
This is a slim book, but it is full and heavy with love and community both human and other-than-human. Hogan asks us to pay attention, to see the other beings we share this world with, and give them what they are due. They are what makes us human and without them, we would not have a world to live in. -
A total five star read! Once again, I probably wouldn't have picked this up on my own but I am eternally grateful for it being assigned reading in a class. The writing is beautiful and the experiences of the author are phenomenally written and expressed so beautifully, along with just being so educational and eye-opening on the indigenous relationships with non-human animals. I recommended this to my grandma AND it helped me feel calmer when there was a spider in my room when I was trying to sleep!
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This deceptively slim volume is packed with rich prose; you need to take your time with this one. Ms. Hogan's style takes some getting used to (this is the first work of hers that I have read), but her message is clear: we -- humans-- must do better. As a species and as stewards of this planet. We need to respect and appreciate our fellow inhabitants, plant and animal, and our shared home. She draws interesting comparisons between centuries of indigenous knowledge based on observation versus modern scientific method, which can be destructive and is often invasive. Lots of lessons in here!
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Lovely little book that combines poetry, reflective essays, and a wondrous view of life and land.
Hogan’s work calls to mind Weill:
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.”
Much of the book lifts the soul, but a sadness creeps in as she begins to dwell on what we have lost. -
3.5 rating. Loved reading about the author’s slice of heaven where she lives and shares her life with nature. It is also somewhat sorrowful as the author spotlights how humans are single handily changing this bucolic landscape. The lower rating is based on the book’s focus on the serene and loving side of nature without recognition of the brutality of the animal world. Life is cruel for all species albeit humans certainly don’t help.
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Beautiful personal essays that celebrate animals and our relationship too them. She shows animals in a way that treats them as equals to humans, even with their differences. They are ones we can have the honor to get to know if only for brief moments. Hogan really honors animals with her essays while also telling her honest stories as well.
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A lovely read.
As I live in a dense, urban space, reading Linda's perspective on the overlapping worlds animals and human beings reside was soothing.
I was moved by Linda defining humans as keepers of earth with animals serving the vital role of guide in teaching humans the natural rhythms of our planet. -
Intimate, tender, and often cloying prose-essays on the lives of animals. A corollary to Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass,” whereas this slim volume doesn’t contain the graceful fusion of modern science and Indigenous wisdom, but rather clunkily anthropomorphizes in halting prose, which is heartbreaking as Hogan’s poetry can be breathtaking.
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Received as a GoodReads giveaway. Essays and poems about the author's relationship with the natural world, often linked with Native American viewpoints, stories and history. Deeply personal, beautifully written and moving.
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A beautiful and evocative book that illuminates the rich inner lives of animals and the human bond by a gifted Chickasaw thinker, poet, and writer. A book to return to over and over for inspiration, comfort, and connection.
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Essays and a few poems describing animals and other aspects of the natural environment and the author’s life from a Native American perspective. Some are luminous. Others are pedestrian. A few are repetitive.
The book rates 3.5 stars. -
6 stars! What a beautiful book. Linda Hogan is a treasure. I read this book at a time when I needed to slow down, take a dose of bear medicine, hunker in, and attune, and that's exactly what Hogan's words will do. This book is part elegy, meditation, prayer, observation and ChantSong. A gift.
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Sometimes Linda Hogan's expositions on animal lives and indigenous mythologies felt a little rose-colored, but on the whole this was an incredibly tender and beautiful set of essays about the relationships that can unfold between different animals sharing land.
