Strong Feather
Poems
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In Strong Feather, Jennifer Reeser revisits the salient themes of Indigenous-her acclaimed, award-winning preceding poetry collection. While the poems in Strong Feather reprise the exposition of a Native American heritage juxtaposed with a mixed European ancestry, many of them center on a Native American female character of the author's creation-a poet/prophet/warrior of sorts. Displaying a masterful command of form throughout, Strong Feather also includes personal poems, translations, and tales from Cherokee and other indigenous traditions. The result is a spellbinding and uniquely engaging collection of storytelling, mythmaking, and inspirational musings, energized by a keenly interrogated mixed-race heritage.
End of the winter, middle March,
Waking, I find it beneath my quilt
Clinging to linens the hue of larch,
Softer and whiter than milk when spilt-
One petite feather. Its hollow "hilt"
Pointing toward me, is curved and long,
Slightly translucent, and at a tilt.
How has this feather stayed so strong?
. . . .
PRAISE FOR STRONG FEATHER:
What I love most about Jennifer Reeser's poems is their swagger. Not conceit (there's none of that) but rather a delightful confidence in her art and in her judgments. Maybe that's communicated by the title of her new book, before we even get to the first poem. Can a feather be strong? You better believe it.
-John Wilson, Englewood Review of Books + Marginalia Review of Books
Jennifer Reeser's Strong Feather continues her personal legacy of applying classical technique to make another world visible. Like Countee Cullen of the Harlem renaissance, she is a master of rhyming forms that present life beyond the expected edges of formal verse. Witness the marvelous "Shape Shifter," a Petrarchan sonnet like no other, or the stunning "The Courier du Bois and the Savage," an ekphrastic poem written as an English ode but conveying a modern message about equality. Her elegant use of rhyming couplets in "White Lady" concentrate the poem's illumination of contrasting lives. A hundred pages of such treasures will bring you lives you might not otherwise meet and pleasures you would otherwise miss.
-Arthur Mortensen, Expansive Poetry Online
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jennifer Reeser is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently, Strong Feather (Able Muse Press, 2022), and Indigenous (Able Muse Press, 2019), which was awarded Best Poetry Book of 2019 by Englewood Review of Books. Reeser's poems, reviews, and translations of Russian, French, along with the Cherokee and various Native American Indian languages, have appeared in Poetry, Rattle, the Hudson Review, Recours au Poème, Light Quarterly, the Formalist, the Dark Horse, SALT, Able Muse, and elsewhere.
A biracial writer of European American and Native American Indian ancestry, Reeser was born in Louisiana and now divides her time between Louisiana and her land on the Cherokee Reservation in Indian Country near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation of which her family is a part.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reeser's layered latest (after Indigenous: Poems) considers her Native American heritage in poems that demonstrate a powerful and expansive command of form. Much of this work explores her mixed-race identity and indigenous history, combining personal poems with Cherokee tales in an effort to "redo the history once done." The feather provides an apt metaphor for the fragile yet beautiful humanity that Reeser renders, despite "all the grief we wear." The opening poem, "Strong Feather," describes "one petite feather. Its hollow ‘hilt'/ Pointing toward me, is curved and long,/ Slightly translucent, and at a tilt./ How has this feather stayed so strong?" Reeser's speakers assume the voice of many historical indigenous figures, as well as a character, Strong Feather, who is compared to a "wounded, wizened bird." Strong Feather invites the reader to look at the world again, to wonder about age-old questions, "Why should you take by force what's yours through love?" and apply their lessons. This excellent collection is full of artistry and meaning.
