The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems
Joy Harjo, one of this country's foremost Native American voices, combines elements of storytelling, prayer, and song, informed by her interest in jazz and by her North American tribal background, in this, her fourth volume of poetry.\ She draws from the Native American tradition of praising the land and the spirit, the realities of American culture, and the concept of feminine individuality.
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Joy Harjo, one of this country's foremost Native American voices, combines elements of storytelling, prayer, and song, informed by her interest in jazz and by her North American tribal background, in this, her fourth volume of poetry.Publishers Weekly``The leap between the sacred and profane is as thin as fishing line.'' In her seventh book, Harjo (Secrets from the Center of the World), a member of the Creek tribe, makes this leap time after time. Working with a diction and a syntax that seem deliberately plain and declarative, she invokes ancient Native American myth, often from the midst of ordinary contemporary places such as Brooklyn, N.Y.; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago's O'Hare airport (``Chicago rose up as a mechanical giant with soft insides buzzing''). Her myths endow everyday experience with a transformative meaning that rescues Harjo's characters from their sometimes isolating individuality. Yet the myths also heed the details of individual experience as ``the single complicated human becomes a wave of humanness.'' The warmth of her universalizing gift is inclusive, collecting the lives of taxi drivers, an infant granddaughter, and ``an Apache man who is passing by my table in a restaurant.'' Readers may likewise feel swept up in the gentle wave of Harjo's poetry and prose poetry, where ``every day is a reenactment of the creation story.'' (Dec.)
AcknowledgmentsReconciliation: A PrayerITribal MemoryThe Creation Story: "There are many versions of the creation story . . ."3The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: "I traveled far above the earth . . ."5The Naming: "I never liked my mother's mother . . ."11The Flood: "Embedded in Muscogee tribal memory . . ."14A Postcolonial Tale: "The landscape of the late twentieth century . . ."18Mourning Song: "In the city in which I live . . ."20Northern Lights: "I was invited up north once . . ."22Who Invented Death and Crows and is There Anything We Can Do to Calm the Noisy Clatter of Destruction? "When I hear crows talking . . ."26The Myth of Blackbirds: "I believe love is the strongest force in the world . . ."28The Song of the House in the House: "I believe an architectural structure is interactive . . ."31Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace: "I think of Bell's theorum . . ."33Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century: "I was in a downtown Chicago hotel room . . ."35IIThe World Ends HereWitness: "The Indian wars never ended . . ."41Wolf Warrior: "One morning I prepared to see a friend off . . ."44Promise of Blue Horses: "The heart is constructed of a promise..."48Sonata for the Invisible: "My son called me once at three in the morning . . ."49The Place the Musician Became a Bear: "I heard about Jim Pepper . . ."51The Other Side of Yellow to Blue: "For weeks the tune 'Contemplation' . . ."54The Field of Miracles: "It's possible to understand the world . . ."55Petroglyph: "Jaune Quick-To-See Smith's paintings . . ."58Fishing: "A few weeks before he died . . ."60Promise: "The spring before my granddaughter Krista's birth . . ."62The Dawn Appears with Butterflies: "I was on my way to Tuba City . . ."64Perhaps the World Ends Here68MVTO
\ Sandra Cisneros“I fell in love with these poems, with their clarity and light, their wisdom born somewhere between sky and earth.”\ \ \ \ \ Adrienne Rich“I turn and return to Harjo's poetry for her breathtaking, complex witness and for her world-remaking language: precise, unsentimental, miraculous.”\ \ \ Publishers Weekly``The leap between the sacred and profane is as thin as fishing line.'' In her seventh book, Harjo (Secrets from the Center of the World), a member of the Creek tribe, makes this leap time after time. Working with a diction and a syntax that seem deliberately plain and declarative, she invokes ancient Native American myth, often from the midst of ordinary contemporary places such as Brooklyn, N.Y.; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago's O'Hare airport (``Chicago rose up as a mechanical giant with soft insides buzzing''). Her myths endow everyday experience with a transformative meaning that rescues Harjo's characters from their sometimes isolating individuality. Yet the myths also heed the details of individual experience as ``the single complicated human becomes a wave of humanness.'' The warmth of her universalizing gift is inclusive, collecting the lives of taxi drivers, an infant granddaughter, and ``an Apache man who is passing by my table in a restaurant.'' Readers may likewise feel swept up in the gentle wave of Harjo's poetry and prose poetry, where ``every day is a reenactment of the creation story.'' (Dec.)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalHarjo (In Mad Love and War, Wesleyan Univ. Pr., 1990), a member of the Muscogee tribe, explores in these transcendent poems the myths imbedded in tribal memory and the spirituality they impart to everyday life.\ \
