When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry

Edited by Joy Harjo with LeAnne Howe and Jennifer Elise Foerster
Norton (2020) – 496 pages

Review by Thomas Davis

When N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1969 for House Made of Dawn, it signaled that Native American writers were among the finest writers in the world. Now, Joy Harjo, the U.S. Poet Laureate, along with LeAnne Howe, Jennifer Foerster, and five regional contributing editors, have compiled the poetry anthology, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through. This book is as important in Native American literary history as Momaday’s momentous novel.

A number of reasons are behind this book’s importance, especially for tribal colleges and universities. first, it is a Norton anthology—for generations, Norton has published the world’s most important literature anthologies that serve as college and university textbooks. few students have graduated without having been exposed in their English classes to Norton’s British, world, or American anthologies. Now, a Norton anthology is dedicated to Native American poetry, exploring its breadth and scope.

Second, the poems, with short biographies preceding them, represent the work of 161 poets, illustrating the vibrance of Native literature. The poets come from five regions: Northeast and Midwest, Plains and Mountains, Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Pacific Islands, Southwest and West, and Southeast. Past poets like Peter Perkins Pitchlynn (Choctaw), who lived from 1806-1881, are represented as well as contemporary luminaries like Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinabe) and Luci Tapahonso (Diné).

The poetry’s range is breathtaking. Some poems, like Alex Jacob’s (Akwesasne Mohawk) “Indian Machismo or Skin to Skin,” are raw and searing:

“but yo! We ain’t no alcatraz, no aim, no wounded knee we don’t vote but who votes anyway you kick out the blood-sucking scum they just come back wiser, richer, hard-core thieves”

Others achieve transcendence, such as gloria Bird’s (Spokane) “Images of Salmon and You”:

“Your absence has left me only fragments of a summer’s run on a night like this, fanning in August heat, a seaweed song. Sweat glistens on my skin, wears me translucent, sharp as scales.”

Poets with tribal college connections illustrate how TCus have helped spark the Native literary renaissance. Harjo, and so many of the poets, graduated or have taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, while Richard Littlebear (Northern Cheyenne) serves as president of Chief Dull Knife College.

In many ways When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, enlightens a world that needs to be enlightened by Native American poetry’s genius. Every tribal college library should have this volume.

Thomas Davis, a long-time tribal college educator and administrator, is author of Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings: The Tribal College and World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium Poems (Tribal College Press).