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Thank you, thank you, @kspenmoll , for my #PoetrySwap gifts! I can‘t wait to explore Long Soldier‘s work! The bookmarks, Van Gogh sticky notes and candle are perfect! Thank you so much! 🧡📚🧡📚🧡📚

This was an outstanding collection, specifically the Whereas statements.

Such wonderful goodies @KatieDid927 !! Thank you so much! The poet is new to me so i am excited! #poetryswap2021

Did not expect to learn some hard history in a book of poetry, but I did!

One book I‘d love to highlight for American Indigenous Heritage Month is this breathtaking poetry collection that I just finished this morning and haven‘t properly reviewed yet. A Lakota Sioux woman responds to the US govt‘s semi-apology for the suffering of Indigenous people, using some mindblowingly inventive, original, touching language and doing SO much with form and shape. Really recommend! #integrateyourshelf @ChasingOm

For those Littens that love #Poetry, this poem is like a small treasure box with inner drawers. The reading changes with each direction you read the lines (across, diagonal). Gorgeous and deceptive (it's not simple).

Soldier's poems often focus on language, whether the words of her Oglala Lakota tribal language or the language of the law, particularly the treaties between Congress and the American Indian tribes (this is where the title of the collection comes from). In analyzing the words we use she challenges her own perceptions and what it means to be both a citizen of the United States as well as a citizen of her tribe.

Incredible and essential.

I‘m not sure I‘m smart enough to have understood everything in this book but I think what it is mainly about is language, and especially how language is a form of control. And it seems to me that the book is not so much a thing as an action (interestingly, language always used to be understood as an action) and in how it stretches language and appropriates government speech, it‘s an act of power. At least, that‘s how it seems to me.

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Brilliant and beautiful. The poetry spirals in to specifics and out to broad concepts, encompasses past and present, and never lags. A poetry collection worth owning. 5 out of 5 on GR.

Picked this up from The Portland Book festival.

Books that unpack the idea of “otherness.” 🦋 Tap the link to see why these books were chosen by PEN America for the #PENOutLoud series on Mar 1 with Layli Long Soldier & Claudia Rankine! •• https://www.strandbooks.com/strand-blog#/entry/entry06-unpack...

Indigenous women writers up on our blog! ✨
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@strandbookstore/indigenous-women-writers-bc1d4b5a67bb" rel="nofollow" target="_top">https://medium.com/@strandbookstore/indigenous-women-writers-bc1d4b5a67bb

Blanket, tea & poetry - what better way to end a Sunday💕

Two more Native authors from my TBR- a collection of poetry and a memoir, both recommended to me by Tommy Orange.

#IndigenousPeoplesDay

Poetry is magnificent sometimes. #readingwomenchallenge #differentmuscles

-"Steady Summer"

-"Vaporative"

Really beautiful poems about the Native experience, US government hypocrisy, and survival. All were good, but the “Whereas” statements floored me.

For my #fridayreads and #weekendreads, I'm starting this volume of poetry and returning to Middlemarch. What are you reading this weekend?

This is how we learn history.

Long Soldier objectifies grammar to allow the reader to understand the things they never knew before.

✨Ep. 42 has arrived!✨ ⠀
We're talking about INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN by Thanhha Lai and WHEREAS by Layli Longsoldier. Head over to your favorite podcatcher to listen to our discussion episode for #NationalPoetryMonth. And don't worry if you haven't read them yet. We wanted this episode to inspire those who haven't read them–so this one's for you!

I‘m not much of a poetry person so it‘s difficult to talk about this book. There is so much to learn, understand and feel in her words. Excellent.

Page 72, I think is what I related to most.

Whereas I‘m reading Layli Long Soldier‘s #poetry with my #tea today... I thought I'd snap a photo. ~~~ #BooksAndTea #indigenousLiterature

I am really not a poetry reader, so my response to the first half of this book was similar to my response to modern art: I don‘t really get it. However, I found the second half tremendous in its examination of the Oglala Sioux Lakota experience and the author‘s response to the official US “apology” to native peoples. Thoughtful, honest, vital. #24in48

Several blows to the gut in this. So good.

So I disassemble mechanics comma how to score sound music movement across the page. I watch the compassionate comma slow the singular mind of two lovers. When we cannot speak our mind the comma will cool will sigh it will lick an envelope for us. Because the tongue of a comma is detached, patient.

Make room in your heart for the song of grasses, the landscape of Oglala Lakota people, and bitter songs of broken promises, broken treaties. This #poetry collection is more than a lament, more than a ballad of testimony. It‘s fierce, intelligent and wry. A singular voice to light the way forward. ❤️#Indigenous

Long Soldier plays with form in such meaningful ways. I was impressed from the start, and yet it has taken weeks of living with her words for me to realize that she has touched me at a level much deeper than appreciation.
#Ownvoices #poetry

#Indigenous #poetry

I‘ve got a backlog of books that I‘ve finished and want to review before returning them to the library. Which one do you want to hear about most?

I revised until the poem forgot its way back troubled I let it go when you love something let it go if it returns be a good mother father welcome the poem open armed pull out the frying pan grease it coat it prepare a meal apron & kitchen sweat labor my love my sleeves pushed to elbows like the old days a sack of flour & keys I push them typography & hotcakes work seduce a poem into believing I can home it I can provide it white gravy 👇

Whereas her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota, therein the question: what did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces.
#Indigenous #poetry
(Image: Tenille Campbell / Sweet Moon Photography https://onbeing.org/programs/layli-long-soldier-the-freedom-of-real-apologies-ma...

This is 3 of 5 in my reading of the National Book Award short list for poetry. The first section of the collection plays with language and form. The second section is more grounded and is a response to the formal apology given by congress to the native peoples in 2009. Here again the author plays with language to demonstrate the emptiness of the apology. These poems are complex and working at a different level than the others I‘ve read so far.

Whereas poetry should not only exist as easily digestible sound bites there exists Layli Long Soldier‘s collection WHEREAS - which is beautiful, and heartbreaking, and absolutely one of the best books of 2017. The poem “38”, which ends the first section, is a masterwork and destroyed me for days after reading it.

I‘m pulling for this one at the National Book Awards this month.

#poetry
#riotgrams

#HappyIndigenousPeoplesDay!

If you‘re looking for the perfect read for #indigenouspeoplesday, I highly recommend WHEREAS by Layli Long Soldier, which is a finalist for the #NationalBookAward. I have no words for how beautiful and meaningful this collection is. Just read it. Think about it. You won‘t be same.

#HappyIndigenousPeoplesDay!

If you‘re looking for the perfect read for #indigenouspeoplesday, I highly recommend WHEREAS by Layli Long Soldier, which is a finalist for the #NationalBookAward. I have no words for how beautiful and meaningful this collection is. Just read it. Think about it. You won‘t be same after. - K 🍁🍂 #thereadingwomen

In 2009 the US government wrote a resolution apologizing to Native Americans. It was the usual non apology one sadly expects from government. This collection of poems is in regards to that "apology." Beautiful, powerful, creative, and thoughtful poetry. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Her poetry is powerful and beautiful. #poetry

I've made a new reading rule. I must read one book from my own library after I finish a book from the library. Reading this excellent poetry collection today. #library #poetry #mounttbr

Love this epigraph. ✍🏼

I finally got my hands on this poetry collection out from Graywolf this year. I'm going to go ensconce myself in her words outside in the sun. 🌾☀️

#selfcaresunday #poetry #indigenouslit

Today's #bookmail was inspired by last Sunday's NY Times Book Review. The issue was about poetry, and while some of the books reviewed aren't available until next week, this volume of poetry by Layli Long Soldier is. Carla Hayden was featured in By the Book, and she mentioned Women Who Read Are Dangerous. The 3rd book is a collection of essays from the By the Book column. I love The NY Times Book Review ❤️📚.

I have no words. 😭