If you read only one book of poems this summer, make it An American Sunrise ... stunning ... Every step of the journey is deeply moving. Harjo doesn’t just honor the people, creatures and landscapes that were lost, she embodies and embraces them ... Rich and deeply engaging, An American Sunrise creates bridges of understanding while reminding readers to face and remember the past.
... full of celebration, crisis, brokenness and healing, with poems that rely on lyric techniques like repetition, avoidance of temporal specifics and the urge to speak collectively.
... casts an undeniably critical eye on the kinds of policies — and people — Trump tends to support ... Her poems are accessible and easy to read, but making them no less penetrating and powerful, spoken from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all — but also from a very specific and justified well of anger ... a stark reminder of what poetry is for and what it can do: how it can hold contradictory truths in mind, how it keeps the things we ought not to forget alive and present.
