How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001

As I was finishing this collection, my repeated thought was, "I lament all that I still do not know."

I consider myself a bad poetry reader (in that it often feels hard for me, like I am not understanding things). I am glad I was concurrently reading Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux and Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism, both of which gave me added context for reading this poetry. Plus, at the end, Harjo has some fairly extensive notes that give further background for various poems. (Wish I had found the notes section prior to finishing the poems.)

From Harjo's poem "Emergence":

I remember when there was no urge
to cut the land or each other

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into pieces,
when we knew how to think
in beautiful.

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This is a phenomenal set of poems. I found myself drawn back to the middle, Harjo's work in the 80's and early 90's was by far my favorite but there are gems throughout. Seeing her progression as a poet is also fascinating and the notes add nuance to the historical or personal context of the poems.

I only liked a few of these. A lot of them I just couldn't relate to in any way, which I suppose is not a surprise. The language seemed largely ordinary. Don't know what else to say by way of elaborating, they just didn't connect.