A year ago, I took a Native American Literature class, and it was one of the best classes I had taken in college if only because it opened my eyes to a nearly forgotten culture that I rarely think about. The poems and stories coming from individuals of that culture surprised me in their richness and originality, and in the way that they spun old myths and legends, the ways that they showed the poet and the storyteller as the revivers of a community. I will never forget that class or the poems and stories that I read. During the course, we focused on the writings of both Simon Ortiz and Leslie Marmon Silko.
I posted a poem by Silko yesterday. Unfortunately, this site wouldn't let me keep the format of the poem, the way Silko splays it across the page so that the line breaks and spacings are not all straight down the page, left aligned. That is one thing I liked about her poems. They moved. Here is a link to a website where you can find a video of Silko speaking her poems and stories. It is called Running on the Edge of the Rainbow.
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