- Hardcover: 128 pages
- Publisher: WW Norton (Feb 17 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393047903
- ISBN-13: 978-0393047905
- Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Weaving together myth, generations-old stories and other souces of cultural memory, Harjo (The Woman Who Fell from the Sky; In Mad Love and War; etc.) explores the complexities of identity in a people still haunted by its violently disrupted past. (Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke or Creek Nation.) A facing-page dialogue between poetry and prose, the absorbing long poem "Returning from the Enemy," attempts to reconcile memories of the poet's absent father with memories of her own children, of ancestors and of "each trigger of grass": "We want to know if it's possible to separate and come back together, as the river licking the dock merges with the sea a few blocks away.// Long-legged birds negotiate the shore for food.// I am not as graceful as these souls." At its best, Harjo's map reveals regenerative human cycles that occur even in the midst of the most oppressive histories, with irreconcilably different worlds illuminating each other: a violent mugging becomes an encounter with the Navajo twin monsters; a fake snake set up to scare neighborhood birds becomes a fable of wisdom and perseverance. The more straightforward political critiques can be blandly accusatory: "Why have I come here/ I asked the dark, whose voice is the roar of history as it travels/ with the thoughts of humans who have made the monster." But Harjo's exploration of her layered selves reveals an identity of multiple influences, memories, obstacles and experiences. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
I turn and return to Harjo's poetry for her breathtaking complex witness and for her world-remaking language: precise, unsentimental, miraculous. -- Adrienne Rich
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Get out the map,
This review is from: Map To The Next World Poems (Hardcover)
What an incredible collection! This collection of poems and autobiographical stories is full of politics, poignant observations, philosophies, all to an indigenous beat, and all bearing witness to the madness of our world. And especially to the atrocities done in this world, past and present. By letting us see through her eyes, Harjo makes the politics personal, and brings the novice reader into her fiery views, making us feel and see in different ways. I was most affected by the prose stories between the poems. And judging by the other reviews, this isn't even Harjo's best work overall!
4.0 out of 5 stars
More personal (individual) less universal,
By
This review is from: Map To The Next World Poems (Hardcover)
I am fond of all Harjo's works - printed or recorded; I was surprised, then, when this volume left me less satisfied than usual with her work. Her writings have moved from poetry to poetry and prose poems to this book subtitled poems and tales - some of the tales are more essay than tale. Looking specifically at the essays, I realized why I was less satisfied with this book: her work is more personal, more self revealing in a way which makes it less universal. But one of the real strengths in much of her writting is that she writes of the particular - her Native American cultural background - in a way that makes it ring as true experience, as universal truth.Once I recognized this shift and read A Map to the Next World with a mind set closer to how I would read confessional poetry, I began to appreciate some of the pieces I first considered weaker in a more favorable light - for example, the design of light and dark - an essay on snap judgment based on hue of skin. The piece Returning from the Enemy is a very strong autobiographical piece alternating prose and poetry - the former being individual and personal, the latter being more universal. The alternation of the two build upon each other as fact and truth ... an thus built a splendid foundation for understanding both the truth of Joy Harjo's life as well as truth of all our lives. Her poetry has strong and wonderful images - from Songs from the House of Death, Or How to Make It Through to the End of a Relationship comes "I run my tongue over the skeleton / jutting from my jaw. I taste / the grit of heartbreak". As usual, Joy Harjo is a master worth reading; this book simply requires a slight adjustment in effort of understanding.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A review from a New York reader,
By A Customer
This review is from: Map To The Next World Poems (Hardcover)
In A Map to the Next World Joy Harjo offers a powerful insight into her culture, rooted in profound spirituality. At the same time her words demolish the artificial boundaries between many worlds - physical, religious and cultural - mapping dynamic interchanges in a universal dimension. In a similar manner, her poems interact with the prose pieces that follow. Such a format gives the reader an opportunity to listen to the poet's own comments, the lucid and fluid process of her thoughts, the experience from which the poem was written. The poetic voice and the autobiographical "I" thus become the poet and the storyteller who interact with each other, adding a new layer to the poem - that of a spoken word, in her best native tradition. A Map to the Next World has the lyrical, visionary fire and original poetic technique of the previous books by Harjo. However, this new collection opens up a larger picture of her world: it articulates "the intricate context of history and family" (p.31), in which destruction and redemption lead to "the very act of our beautiful survival" (p.51). Once again, Joy Harjo is bearing witness of her journey toward acceptance, wisdom and wholeness, in an outstanding poetic form.
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