Excellent collection of necessary artists. I'm just glad this exists. ( )

I especially liked the poems:
Maoli, by Imaikalani Kalahele,
Coquille, by Elizabeth Woody,
Notes From Coosa, by Jennifer Elise Foerster,
The Rhetorical Feminine, by Laura Da',
These Rivers Remember, by Roberta Hill,
River People--The Lost Watch, by Gordon Henry Jr,
Thirteen Ways of Losing at an Indian, by Anita Endrezze,
Palominos Near Tuba City, by Denise Sweet,
Rookeries, by Joan Naviyuk Kane,
The Book of the Missing, Murdered and Indigenous-ch 1, by M.L. Smoker
Na Wa Ea, The Freed Waters, by Mahealani Perez-Wendt,
In the Field, by Joe Dale Tate Nevaquaya,
From Dissolve, by Sherwin Bitsui,
Within Dinetah the People's Spirit Remains Strong ( )

It all started as a map: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-p... - Joy Harjo decited to map the U.S. with Native Nations poets and poems. There was one condition - they had to be still living, showing the modern state of the art (one of the authors died while the project was in progress). The result was a selection of 47 poets, covering the map (including Alaska and all the Pacific islands (including Guam)) and showing the diversity of the genre. The map was built based on where a poet wanted to be shown - where their tribe is, where their tribe used to be or where the poet feels at home. Then the 47 poets recorded their poems, added commentary (available to listen to or as a transcript) about the poem, their connection to poetry and a lot more things in between and someone added short biographies. And the online project was complete.

Then came the anthology - the book that actually made me realize that this project existed. It reprints the 47 poems - and the biographies - bu leaves out the commentaries. And unlike a map where you can pick your own order through it, a book had to order the poems somehow. A few of the poems are bilingual, a few are in English but they are using so many native words that you need internet to figure out what happens if you do not speak the language (a couple of poems have translations in footnotes, most don't). The order appears to be geographical on the surface but if you read the introduction, you will realize that the map directions are used as a base for a topic - beginning and endings - and if you are still not sure, a Hawaiian poem in the middle section drives that home.

The poems are steeped into the cultures they are coming from - some of them retell legends, some of them talk about the reality of their people now; some go back in time into history, some seem to look forward. Coming from different cultures, they are discordant and different - there is no overall tradition that ties them together as happens with most anthologies - except for Earth, suffering and hope.

I did not like every single poem, I did not understand quite a few of them (for some the commentaries helped, for others, even that did not help much). Most are modern (with all the mess that comes from modern poetry) although there are a few traditional styles. A few of them sound like chants, a few are almost crossing into prose. Some are a few lines long, some are 18 pages (ok... only one is 18 pages). Some use the page to almost draw a picture with the positioning of the words, others allow the words to talk for themselves.

But what all of them end up is creating pictures and make you think and feel. And that's what good poetry does.

Even if the whole project was just this anthology, I would still have liked it. Add the online portions and it becomes a lot more. ( )