An American Sunrise: Poems
Description
In this stunning collection, Joy Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where the Mvskoke people, including her own ancestors, were forcibly displaced. 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.
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About the Author
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019 to 2022. The author of nine books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, several plays and children's books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, she is the recipient of honors including the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. As a musician and performer, Harjo has produced seven award-winning music albums, including her newest, I Pray for My Enemies (2021). She is executive editor of the anthology When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, and the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, board of directors chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Reviews
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.--Maya Phillips - The New Yorker
[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.--Craig Morgan Teicher - NPR
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.--John Freeman - Boston Globe
While the subject matter of her new poems continuously hits you in the gut, Harjo brings a sense of resilience to that dark history.--Christian Allaire - Vogue
Radiant.... [A] profound, brilliantly conceived song cycle, celebrating ancestors, present and future generations, historic endurance and fresh beginnings.--Jane Ciabattari - BBC
Reveals glimpses of life in Oklahoma's Muscogee Creek Nation alongside delicately rendered ruminations on memory, family and healing.--Drew Tewksbury - Los Angeles Times
[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
