The 2006 Winter Reading Challenge includes a category “Native American Author” again (it did in 2021 which doesn’t seem like so long ago, but it’s been half a decade?). Instead of doing what Dave Ramsey would have approved, which is to say get a book from the library, I ordered this book on Amazon (also buying it on a credit card, Dave). But, in my defense, it was only $3, and I needed to pad my order to $35 to get free shipping on a heating element (since returned as it was damaged in transit, and I’ve since returned the other book that I bought at the same time because someone spilled something on the pages in the bindery, which meant the first 50 pages of the book were unreadable but the cover was pristine–hey, Amazon, one out of three is bad). At any rate, after finishing Different Seasons, I tore into other books to get back on track in my quest for the full 15 (reading a book in all categories in the Winter Reading Challenge), which is more fun than the Whole 30, that’s for sure.
At any rate, this book is half traditional Native American songs, with preference given to plains and southwest Indian tribes, and the other half is contemporary Native American poets, and although many of the names do not sound especially Native American, one presumes they have more tribal ancestry than many United States senators.
The songs are often presented in concrete form, with the words making shapes on the pages, which led me a couple of times to have to re-read the poems when I figured out that the words were going in a different direction that I thought. I mean, they make sense, the songs, in their simple ways, and I guess the concrete form made it so they filled pages where they would not otherwise.
The poetry is okay in spots. A little much about being Native American in places, and as you know, I prefer poetry which I can relate to, not something that’s affixed to explains something separate from me (and with the subtext, culturally if not textually, that I could never understand). Is Joy Harjo, whose collection I read for the Winter Reading Challenge in 2021, represented? You betcha! And as this book is copyright 1996, it’s even before she became Poet Laureate.
I’ve mused before on Dover Thrift Editions: For a long time, they were cheap paperbacks with classics that have fallen out of favor, and here I got one in 2026 “new.” Although I have to wonder if this was printed recently or is if it’s part of someone’s dwindling 30-year-old stock. The cover price is $4, and I did pay less for it. But they are still a thing, on Dover’s Web site and everything. Good on ’em.
I didn’t flag anything to mention in particular, so nothing will really stick with me. But that’s so much of poetry in general and, increasingly, in things I read. Ah, well, I have this collection of book reports to remind me.
