Just finished reading through Joy Harjo’s “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky”
Talk about having a story to tell! First impression has me feeling like I can revisit this book every couple of months and get a whole new perspective each time. A nice deal of mystery behind some of the stories but I suspect that might have more to do with my (relative) youth than anything else.
The first read also has me a little disoriented by Harjo’s commentary immediately after said poem; throws off the balance of the book for me. I would have preferred to have them in the back as footnotes but maybe Harjo is trying to create a different sense of community through her reflections on the poems. Lets see what happens on the subsequent reads
Poems from “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky”
“The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. Stories and songs are evidence of this praise.” – Joy Harjo
I read the book as it was nearby when I crashed at the Snackbox (thank you OB and a thank you to Matt and Kristin, too). I agree. The poem/story coupling disoriented me. I wanted the poems to stand alone, perhaps aided by footnotes at the end, but I wanted the poems to talk to one another, not the prose. And if the stories were to be seen as prose poems, I would have required more of them. I wasn’t totally disappointed by the collection. Some really great pieces in the book, but I think that they may have been buried alive at times by the pauses the prose created. Let me know if this changes on the second read.