When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Poetry by Indigenous Nations, Edited by Joy Harjo, Leanne Howe, and Jennifer Elise Foerster

Description

W. W. Norton, paperback

Publication Date: August 25, 2020

Publisher Marketing: This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Diné poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Luci Tapahanso, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Ray Young Bear. When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature, without which no study of American poetry is complete.

Explore more from our collection.