Earth Always Endures: Native American Poems

This eloquent new anthology gives a vivid insight into the world of Native Americans. The chants, prayers, and songs in these pages vibrate with wisdom, joy, and terrible sadness. Underlying everything is a sense of the sacred - the wish, as one Yokuts poet says, to be "one with the world."
The sixty poems in this collection are accompanied by over forty unforgettable duotone photographs by Edward S. Curtis. This stunning combination of word and image brings us closer than ever before to the heart of Native American traditions.
The poems come from the woodlands, the plains, the deserts, and the pueblos. They speak of love, of war, of the known and the unknowable. Today's flowering of new writing by Native Americans has revived interest in the song traditions that underlie their work. This anthology aims to give a representative selection of the best of those traditions, from Maine to California.

Grade 7 Up-The eloquent words of the Sioux, Chippewa, Zuni, Navajo, and other native nations echo throughout this powerful collection of Native American poetry. Many of the poems are prayers to the heavens and gods, lullabies, or ceremonial dances. It is easy to understand the Native Americans' oneness with the Earth through these brief, but emotional, passages. Few words are needed; some of the poems have as little as three (the book's title is an entire Mandan lyric). But the words are carefully chosen and masterfully translated. The honesty of spirit reflected in this collection is intimately enhanced by stunning sepia-tone photographs. Many are portraits, quiet, yet brimming with inner wisdom, depicting the joys and pride of warriors and wives. When strength and silence come together so effortlessly, as they do in this volume, it is a true treasure.
Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WI
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Neil Philip brings together 60 chants, prayers and songs in Earth Always Endures: Native American Poems. Often haiku-like in their spareness, the quietly magnificent poems sing of war, love, the land and animals: they do not seem to have been chosen for children in particular. This is a fine and serious collection of a largely unrecorded poetic tradition. Over 40 of Edward S. Curtis's (1868-1952) elegant duotone photographs of Native Americans accompany the text.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Paired with Curtis's classic photographs, these sacred chants capture the heartbeat of a people. An Apache prays ``for people to smile as long as I live''; a Yokuta, to be ``one with this world!''; and a Kiowa asks for universal charity--``Because I am poor,/I pray for every living creature.'' There are songs about birth and old age; songs for young warrior and those who yearn for their safe return; songs about living with joy (``The sky/loves to hear me'') and courage (``I am simply on the earth./Need I be afraid?''); and a powerful ode, composed during a Civil Warera massacre, about dying with dignity (``Nothing lives long/Nothing lives long/Nothing lives long/Only the earth and the mountains''). Philip (Odin's Family, p. 1054, etc.) arranges the selections--from a variety of traditions, among them Navajo, Pima, Chippewa, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Omaha, Passamaquoddy, Osage--in a circle, taking readers from dawn to dawn. Timeless poems, haunting photographs--a whole world to ponder. (Poetry. 10+) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 4 and up. Each poem in this work, a remarkably rich pairing of Edward S. Curtis' photographic images of Native Americans with the poems of many tribal groups, is followed by tribal origin and translator. The sepia-toned black-and-white photographs include strong youthful faces, elders, and people ceremoniously greeting the day or taking part in traditional ritual. The photos, which Curtis took in diverse Indian communities from the late 1890s through the late 1920s, lend a sense of history to the book, which contains a table of contents, sources, and suggestions for further reading, but no index by tribe, location, or subject. Although the book can work with upper elementary students, its design and theme make it useful through high school. Use with contemporary poems in Hirschfelder and Singer's Rising Voices: Writings of Young Native Americans (1992). Readers wanting to find out more about the photographer may want to read Laurie Lawlor's fine biography Shadow Catcher: The Life and Work of Edward S. Curtis (1994). Karen Morgan