Living Nations, Living Words

April 15, 2021
This richly individualized anthology takes its title from an interactive online map of current Native poets, a project undertaken by Harjo during her tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate. Sponsored by the Library of Congress, the map enables visitors to explore historical contexts in multimedia offerings, including recordings of recitations and commentary by the contributors, who each chose a poem ""based on the theme of place and displacement, and with four touchpoints in mind: visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment."" Poets also decided where to place themselves on the map, and this literary agency as well as the large portraits and brief bios that introduce each writer humanize the collection. Several established Native writers are included, such as Sherwin Bitsui, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and Craig Santos Perez, but the anthology dedicates ample space to emerging authors. And while another recent anthology edited by Harjo and others, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (2020), also organizes poems by geography, this title approaches place metaphorically, collecting poets and poems around shared themes. ""East"" includes pieces on daybreak and beginning,""Center"" functions as ""the belly and the heart of presence,"" and ""West"" signals departure and looks to the future.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Poet Laureate Harjo's historically important project for American poetry belongs in every collection.

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