An American Sunrise: Poems

by Joy Harjo

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Joy Harjo is a force of nature in poetic form and here she masterfully blends her own personal truths and the truths of the displaced Mvskoke population. This is poetry that makes a difference.

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and “one of our finest―and most complicated―poets” (Los Angeles Review of Books), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781094081229
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	11/12/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	3.30(w) x 5.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Creek Nation and was named United States Poet Laureate in 2019. The author of eight books of poetry and a memoir, Crazy Brave, her many honors include the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Ruth Lilly Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

Table of Contents

An American SunriseFor...children.To heal...sub- On...sub- A Map...sub- Break...sub- My...sub- Exile of Memorysub- Granddaughterssub- The Fightsub- Directions to Yousub- Seven Generationssub- Weaponssub- The Story Wheelsub- Washing My Mother's Bodysub- Rising and Fallingsub- The Road to Disapearancesub- The Road to Disappearancesub- Mama and Papa Have The Going Home Shiprock Bluessub- How To Writer a Poem in a Time of Warsub- How To Write a Poem In A Time of Warsub- Mvskoke Mounrning Songsub- Mvskoke Mourning Songsub- First Morningsub- Singing Everythingsub- Falling From the Night Skysub- For Earth's Grandsonssub- Runningsub- A Refuge in the Smallest of Placessub- I'm Nobody! Who Are You?sub- Bourbon and Bluessub- My Great-Aunt Ella Monahwee Jacobs's Testimonysub- Roadsub- Desire's Dogsub- Dawningsub- Honoringsub- My Man's Feetsub- "I Wonder What You Are Thinking,"sub- For Those Who Would Governsub- Rabbit Invents the Saxophonesub- Let There Be No Regretssub- Advice For Countries, Advance, Developing and Fallingsub- Advice For Countries, Advanced, Developing and Fallingsub- Tobacco Origin Storysub- Redbird LoveRedbird Lovesub- Becoming Seventysub- Beyondsub- Memory Sacksub- Cehotosakvtessub- By the Waysub- Welcoming Songsub- An American Sunrisesub- Bless This Land

Editorial Reviews

"Radiant.… [A] profound, brilliantly conceived song cycle, celebrating ancestors, present and future generations, historic endurance and fresh beginnings."

BBC - Jane Ciabattari

"[An American Sunrise] touched me to the marrow."

O, The Oprah Magazine - Oprah

"Rich and deeply engaging, An American Sunrise creates bridges of understanding while reminding readers to face and remember the past."

Elizabeth Lund

"[A] resplendent and reverberating new volume.… Harjo’s bracing political perspective is matched by timeless wisdom.… In clarion, incantatory poems that recalibrate heart and mind, Harjo conveys both the endless ripples of loss and the brightening beauty and hope of the sunrise."

Booklist

"Full of celebration, crisis, brokenness and healing."

New York Times Book Review

"[Joy Harjo’s] poems are accessible and easy to read, but making them no less penetrating and powerful, spoken from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all.… [A] stark reminder of what poetry is for and what it can do."

NPR - Craig Morgan Teicher

"Harjo, though very much a poet of America, extracts from her own personal and cultural touchstones a more galactal understanding of the world, and her poems become richer for it."

The New Yorker - Maya Phillips

"A powerful reminder as to why [Joy] Harjo’s voice is so at home everywhere.… When a poet scales her gaze so grandly, something strange and miraculous happens to poetry. It opens up and becomes more than a mere literary device, it becomes a delivery system of wonder.… Harjo’s goal as a poet has been to wake us up, to talk to us as if there is nothing so natural as singing. It is impossible to read this beautiful book and not wonder if our world would be a little better if more of us remembered how."

Boston Globe - John Freeman

"Reveals glimpses of life in Oklahoma’s Muscogee Creek Nation alongside delicately rendered ruminations on memory, family and healing."

Los Angeles Times - Drew Tewksbury

"While the subject matter of her new poems continuously hits you in the gut, Harjo brings a sense of resilience to that dark history."

Vogue - Christian Allaire