Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light

 Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years by Joy Harjo, 160 pages.

Despite hearing a lot about Joy Harjo, I had never actually read any of her poems. This collection was on the new shelf, and I was very interested in the title, plus the collection filled a prompt on a book challenge I'm working on, so I decided to give it a try. 

The concept for this collection was extremely interesting. It takes one poem for each year of her writing career and arranges them in order, which allows the reader to see how she developed as a poet really dynamically. As with any collection I liked some better than others, but there were some really exceptional poems in this collection. I read all of the notes on the poems at the end, but I would recommend not doing that and instead reading them as you go, the context is definitely helpful for many of the poems in this collection.

Elatsoe

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, 362 pages.

Elatsoe is a rare example of a book set in a world that is both recognizably modern and openly shaped by magic. It is most shaped by the Lipan Apache beliefs of both the protagonist and the author, but also more broadly by other belief systems (I was a big fan of the concept of invasive species monsters). The story itself follows the titular Elatsoe (Ellie for short), a teenage girl who raises the ghosts of dead animals, using a family secret that has been passed down for many generations. The action starts when her cousin Travis' spirit visits her in a dream and asks her to solve his murder. Ellie and her mother go to stay with Travis' newborn son and grieving widow, both to help them with their grief and to unravel the dark mysteries at the heart of this small Texas town.

This was a phenomenal book. The mystery is spooky and engaging, and all of the characters are really wonderful. I found Ellie especially very believably a person. She is both indigenous and asexual, but neither of those things are treated as he defining characteristic. I also really appreciated the story's focus on family, and it's examination of the history of race in America, all while being overall a very exciting and fun book. I would definitely recommend this book, and I really hope that Little Badger decides to write the sequel that the ending teased.
 

The Sentence

 The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, 387 pages.

This is the kind of book that when I reach the end I have a hard time going back and describing what it was about, but here's an approximate. Tookie works at a small bookstore in Minneapolis (trivia, it's a real life bookstore actually owned by the author of this book, who is a fairly minor character) and over the course of a year she is haunted there by the ghost of one of their most persistent customers. The year this book covers is All Souls Day 2019-2020, which means in addition to dealing with the haunting and a number of personal issues, Tookie is also surviving the COVID-19 pandemic and the political upheaval after George Floyd is murdered in her city. 

This book feels almost super-real, it transports you to somewhere else.  The blurb for the book says it "asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book." which isn't inaccurate, but also doesn't feel like the full story. This is a think-y book, often full of sadness and righteous outrage, but it never feels dense. It simply is. As usual, reading Louise Erdrich is a treat, and if I can't describe this book properly you'll have to read it yourself to find out. 

A History of Kindness

 A History of Kindness by Linda Hogan, 142 pages. 

This collection of poems by Linda Hogan is mostly interested in exploring individual and cultural heritage, as well as the interactions both between humans and between humans and the natural world. 

I had previously read and greatly enjoyed Dwellings, an essay collection by this same author, so I was very excited to get my hands on this book! Unfortunately, I found that I don't enjoy Hogan's poetry nearly as much as her prose. I found many of the poems sort of dense and hard to follow, and had a really hard time staying engaged in this collection. 

I believe that people who enjoy poetry that further removed from standard grammar may enjoys this collection more than I did. It seems there were interesting themes threaded through this collection, but I couldn't get through the language enough to appreciate them.