A Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales

Rating:
Summary: Best Harjo since She Had Some Horses
Review: A Map to the Next World is a stunningly good collection of poems from Native Americas best poet. As the title indicates, this is something of a guide to making it to what happens next in a complicated life. As such, it is the story of a Harjo's own journey in figuring out how to make it through the difficulties that our lives put in our paths. These poems come in a progression that is reminiscent of Harjo's classic She Had Some Horses, but here she is more experienced, wiser, tougher, and absolutely a master of the language of her craft. The climax of Map to the Next World is a long poem that explores the complex relationship of Harjo to her father. It alternates between tight prose paragraphs on one page and stark, breathing poetry on the facing page. It's among her strongest poems ever, an explication of pain coupled with the wonderment of the endurance of love. Harjo has published a children's book and has turned to writing fiction. A Map to the Next World is certain evidence as to why poetry remains her oldest and best literary home.

Rating:
Summary: Remaking a World
Review: Joy Harjo's new collection hums on the page and reaches for each of us to shift our perceptions. Though the layout of the book does grow slightly repetitious at times, it bears repeating and is evident why Harjo chose to include her "tales," as she calls them, interspersed with her restrained poems: with _Map to the Next World_ she is creating her own mythological world using the stories of her Native American ancestry as a backdrop. And, it seems, she's recreating this world we live in.

With each new poem, she cultivates a new awareness of the world, pushes us to view our world in a new way. This is what poetry should do, obvious as it may seem, but it is what too much poetry does not. In her poem, "Emergence" she proves her collection concerns itself as much with the trappings of this world than with what will and must come next if we proceed to live independent of past, starving our present and future. "I remember," she writes, "when there was no urge/to cut the land or each other into pieces,/when we knew how to think/in beautiful."

Harjo pushes us to confront our lives and the denial omnipresent throughout them. In "Forgetting," she writes, "Forget history and how it has a way/of looping until you slap up against the chest/of an enemy who desires you and hates himself/for loving himself in you." This poet refuses to let us forget, will not allow us to deny that we all live in this same world, and our descendants will live in the world we make. It is up to us how we make ourselves, how we remake this world, and whether or not we choose to identify "the blessing/of water," our ancestors' memory and to honor the creators.

Rating:
Summary: Remaking a World
Review: Joy Harjo's new collection hums on the page and reaches for each of us to shift our perceptions. Though the layout of the book does grow slightly repetitious at times, it bears repeating and is evident why Harjo chose to include her "tales," as she calls them, interspersed with her restrained poems: with _Map to the Next World_ she is creating her own mythological world using the stories of her Native American ancestry as a backdrop. And, it seems, she's recreating this world we live in.

With each new poem, she cultivates a new awareness of the world, pushes us to view our world in a new way. This is what poetry should do, obvious as it may seem, but it is what too much poetry does not. In her poem, "Emergence" she proves her collection concerns itself as much with the trappings of this world than with what will and must come next if we proceed to live independent of past, starving our present and future. "I remember," she writes, "when there was no urge/to cut the land or each other into pieces,/when we knew how to think/in beautiful."

Harjo pushes us to confront our lives and the denial omnipresent throughout them. In "Forgetting," she writes, "Forget history and how it has a way/of looping until you slap up against the chest/of an enemy who desires you and hates himself/for loving himself in you." This poet refuses to let us forget, will not allow us to deny that we all live in this same world, and our descendants will live in the world we make. It is up to us how we make ourselves, how we remake this world, and whether or not we choose to identify "the blessing/of water," our ancestors' memory and to honor the creators.

Rating:
Summary: I'm Not Just Spouting Good Words!
Review: This book, although interesting in content, tends to ramble on at points, becoming tedious and redundant. However, when you're an acclaimed poet like Harjo, you can do such a things as ramble on about the same subjects, why I believe contemporary poets call this technique creating a theme! Anyway, this book isn't worth ten dollars and fourty cents, in fact, it's not even worth seven dollars, go out and read some Adrienne Rich. Yeah, she gave the book a good review, but maybe she was just hoping that Harjo would feel like she accomplished something and move on!