Native Poetry

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

An Ojibwe elder once counseled Nerburn to "always teach by stories, because stories lodge deep in the heart.'' Using skills learned from Native storytellers as well as a deep reverence for the world's spiritual traditions, Nerburn takes us to an Ojibwe burial, down lonely winter roads, and into landscapes where trees have presence and the earth is made alive by the mystical power of water and light.

In 1847 the Choctaw Tribe took up a collection for Irish Famine Relief. They sent $170 to the US famine relief for Ireland. This was a very generous donation from a Native American Nation that had gone through great hardship themselves. Black '47 is one of the fifty-five poems in Jack Scoltock's Collection. The book is dedicated to the Choctaw Nation.

Longfellow's great narrative poem has been unjustly neglected in recent years though it gives a sympathetic portrait especially of Hiawatha, reared by Nokomis, daughter of the Moon, and his bride Minehaha.

Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard is a deeply personal volume that brings together two legacies of the Deep South. Through elegaic verse that honors her mother and tells of her own fraught childhood, Natasha Trethewey...

The text relates the powerful and dramatic history of the Smoky Mountain Cherokees, who for 40,000 years thrived in the difficult terrain of the Great Smoky Mountains and its surrounding regions areas of what is now Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.

Margaretta Matilda Odell's 1834 Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley is the only substantive early source on Wheatley's life. Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784) is considered the first African American poet to write for a transatlantic audience, and her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) kindled debates about race.

There’s no denying that women of color are portrayed as exceptional gems with oceanic depths in Reneé Drummond-Brown’s Black Exotic Pearls: Poetry Book. The ebony beauties are very aware of what to hold inside and what can be shared openly. She knows that she’s the original Mother of all living Pearls. She’s real. She’s authentic. She’s sincere. Her culture is from the west-south side of the northeast sea. Where foreign seas meet and mingle it’s indisputable that black pearls are always a good choice (catch if you will). But those that channel-surf that colorful ocean and ...

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD | FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY “This is an incredibly powerful book of poetry that is also fiction but it is so real, and singular, as to defy definition, and I defy anyone to read it and come away unchanged.” —Tommy Orange, author...

Apple is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly red on the outside, white on the inside. Eric Gansworth tells his story in Apple (Skin to the Core). The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.

Part manifesto, part memoir, This Wound Is a World is an invitation to “cut a hole in the sky / to world inside”. Belcourt issues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder their sadness and pain without giving up on the future. His poems upset genre and play with form, scavenging for a decolonial kind of heaven where “everyone is at least a little gay”.

This meditative story follows a Nahuatl speaking elder who lives in the 1970s Palo Verde Valley. We learn to listen to the wind, to hear more deeply of life. In the middle of this book is another complete book, The Book of Tlakakili, wisdom sayings passed down through generations. All in iambic pentameter poetry. Here's the beginning: PART ONE: Chapter One 1–10 The hammer swung, and struck the waiting skull. The body crumpled softly to the ground. A halo made of alkali arose, The shimmer of the desert in its breath. Tom Mendez stood and steadied both his hands, Then gripped the kid’s ...

From the creators of Odyssey Honor award-winning We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga comes this companion book of truths about the history, contemporary laws, policies and struggles, and victories of Native Americans, presented in lyrical verse by 12 children, and each with the powerful refrain: We Are Still Here.

Since receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday has had one of the most remarkable careers in twentieth-century American letters. Here, in In the Bear's House, Momaday passionately explores themes of loneliness, sacredness, and aggression through his depiction of Bear, the one animal that has both inspired and haunted him throughout his lifetime.

The Trail of Tears left a deep mark on the Cherokee nation, a mark that still ripples through the descendants of that culture. It should also leave an indelible mark on the current conscience. Come, Wewoka - Poems on the Trail of Tears is a collection of heartfelt reflections on Cherokee culture during those days and after. Diary of Medicine Flower - Cherokee Aphorisms is prose-poetry reflecting Cherokee views on modern life. Together, these two works provide a sense of the vibrancy of Cherokee culture that is far from faded, but in well worth the sampling. Edward C. Patterson (Nv-wo-di A-...

Fans of The Poet X will fall for this powerful, romantic debut novel-in-verse about a Native Hawaiian girl's fight to find belonging in a fracturing family, sharing a message of love with resounding emotional truth. Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church...

In Living in the Tall Grass: Poems of Reconciliation, Chief Stacey Laforme gives a history of his people through stories and poetry to allow us to see through the eyes of indigenous people. In it, he hits hard on matters of residential schools, the environment, suicide among indigenous youth, domestic abuse, and so on, but also writes poems of love and hope. Chief Laforme’s universal message is, “We should not have to change to fit into society, the world should adapt to embrace our uniqueness.”

Discover the Soulful Journey of Life Through Poetry "We Should Talk" by acclaimed author Judy Gorham is a captivating collection of poems crafted over a lifetime. Narrated with heartfelt eloquence by Anjali Purohit, each piece weaves together moments of joy, challenges, and the universal threads that connect us all. This audiobook invites listeners to explore a tapestry of memories, emotions, and reflections that resonate with the human experience. Whether it’s a glimpse of your own life or an echo of the world around you, Judy’s poignant words inspire connection and introspection.

The poems in this collection are a testament to Csaba's resilience, humor, and a deep sense of empathy. The author's reflections on life's joys and challenges are both personal and universal, touching on themes such as love, loss, hope, and the beauty of the natural world. The poems are written in a variety of styles, from free verse to haiku, and are infused with Csaba's unique perspective on the world.

Dreams of the Golden Eagle, a novel in rhyming narrative verse, is a must-listen for lovers of high Native American adventure who will enjoy its action-packed storylines and clarity of image. Set immediately prior to the onset of the Indian Wars, this stirring Native American adventure involves a web of murder, mystery, intrigue, betrayal, love, hatred, and revenge as a far-sighted and fearless chief, in collaboration with the tribal totem, the Golden Eagle, strives to create an alliance between the warring tribes in a concerted effort to thwart the White invasion.