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Dark. Sweet.: New & Selected Poems
Dark. Sweet. offers readers the sweep of LindaHogan's work—environmental and spiritual concerns, her Chickasaw heritage—in spare, elemental, visionary language.
From "Those Who Thunder":
Those who thunder
have dark hair
and red throw rugs.
They burn paper in bathroom sinks.
Their voices refuse to suffer
and their silences know the way
straight to the heart;
it's bus route number eight.
Linda Hogan is the recipient of the 2007 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Spirit of the West Literary Achievement Award. She is also a recipient of the 2016 PEN New England Henry David Thoreau Prize. Her poetry has received an American Book Award, Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination.
From "Those Who Thunder":
Those who thunder
have dark hair
and red throw rugs.
They burn paper in bathroom sinks.
Their voices refuse to suffer
and their silences know the way
straight to the heart;
it's bus route number eight.
Linda Hogan is the recipient of the 2007 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Spirit of the West Literary Achievement Award. She is also a recipient of the 2016 PEN New England Henry David Thoreau Prize. Her poetry has received an American Book Award, Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination.
- GenresPoetryIndigenousRace
416 pages, Paperback
First published June 16, 2014
26 people are currently reading
358 people want to read
About the author
Linda Hogan
80 books555 followersLinda K. Hogan (born 1947 Denver) is a Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence.
Linda Hogan is Chickasaw. Her father is a Chickasaw from a recognized historical family and Linda's uncle, Wesley Henderson, helped form the White Buffalo Council in Denver during the 1950s. It was to help other Indian people coming to the city because of The Relocation Act, which encouraged migration for work and other opportunities. He had a strong influence on her and she grew up relating strongly to both her Chickasaw family in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and to a mixed Indian community in the Denver area. At other times, her family traveled because of the military.
Her first university teaching position was in American Indian Studies and American Studies at the University of Minnesota. After writing her first book, Calling Myself Home, she continued to write poetry. Her work has both a historical and political focus, but is lyrical. Her most recent books are The Book of Medicines (1993) and Rounding the Human Corners. (2008) She is also a novelist and essayist. Her work centers on the world of Native peoples, from both her own indigenous perspective and that of others. She was a full professor of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado and then taught the last two years in the University's Ethnic Studies Department. She currently is the Writer in Residence for her own Chickasaw Nation.
Essayist, novelist, and poet, Hogan has published works in many different backgrounds and forms. Her concentration is on environmental themes. She has acted as a consultant in bringing together Native tribal representatives and feminist themes, particularly allying them to her Native ancestry. Her work, whether fiction or non-fiction, expresses an indigenous understanding of the world.
She has written essays and poems on a variety of subjects, both fictional and nonfictional, biographical and from research. Hogan has also written historical novels. Her work studies the historical wrongs done to Native Americans and the American environment since the European colonization of North America.
Hogan was a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Oklahoma. She is the (inaugural) Writer-in-Residence for the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. In October 2011, she instructed a writing workshop through the Abiquiu Workshops in Abiquiu, New Mexico.
(from Wikipedia)
Linda Hogan is Chickasaw. Her father is a Chickasaw from a recognized historical family and Linda's uncle, Wesley Henderson, helped form the White Buffalo Council in Denver during the 1950s. It was to help other Indian people coming to the city because of The Relocation Act, which encouraged migration for work and other opportunities. He had a strong influence on her and she grew up relating strongly to both her Chickasaw family in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and to a mixed Indian community in the Denver area. At other times, her family traveled because of the military.
Her first university teaching position was in American Indian Studies and American Studies at the University of Minnesota. After writing her first book, Calling Myself Home, she continued to write poetry. Her work has both a historical and political focus, but is lyrical. Her most recent books are The Book of Medicines (1993) and Rounding the Human Corners. (2008) She is also a novelist and essayist. Her work centers on the world of Native peoples, from both her own indigenous perspective and that of others. She was a full professor of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado and then taught the last two years in the University's Ethnic Studies Department. She currently is the Writer in Residence for her own Chickasaw Nation.
Essayist, novelist, and poet, Hogan has published works in many different backgrounds and forms. Her concentration is on environmental themes. She has acted as a consultant in bringing together Native tribal representatives and feminist themes, particularly allying them to her Native ancestry. Her work, whether fiction or non-fiction, expresses an indigenous understanding of the world.
She has written essays and poems on a variety of subjects, both fictional and nonfictional, biographical and from research. Hogan has also written historical novels. Her work studies the historical wrongs done to Native Americans and the American environment since the European colonization of North America.
Hogan was a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Oklahoma. She is the (inaugural) Writer-in-Residence for the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. In October 2011, she instructed a writing workshop through the Abiquiu Workshops in Abiquiu, New Mexico.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 8, 2014
Linda Hogan speaks in poetic images that are impossible for your heart and soul to deny. She puts into language that which runs in our DNA as evolutionary expressions of Earth's dreaming. Clear, powerful, emotional longings, grievings, celebrations, and questions that pierce the human search for a meaningful life.
This collection covers the breadth of her deep listening up to her current poems.
I can't stop reading it and every poem moves me like the ocean moves Life.
This collection covers the breadth of her deep listening up to her current poems.
I can't stop reading it and every poem moves me like the ocean moves Life.
December 18, 2015
Linda Hogan's Dark.Sweet.: New and Selected Poems reminds me of the forest I walk in every evening. I walk to listen; I walk to feel; I walk to see what's new since the day before and what has remained the same. These are much the same reasons I pick up this anthology from next to my rocking chair and browse through it. Hogan has a connection to the world around her, as well as the worlds within, that shines through in every poem, and this is what speaks to me like the forest. Her words make me feel, raising an echo in my heart and memory more often than not. They invite me to see what's new—things that she has experienced and felt that I have not—while at the same time reminding me of what we share as humans, as women, as poets, as people walking this earth together, and how the past still exists, layered under the immediacy of day to day.
I have a feeling that Dark. Sweet. will be a daily companion for me for some time and look forward to each and every visit I will have in its pages.
by Khadijah A.
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
I have a feeling that Dark. Sweet. will be a daily companion for me for some time and look forward to each and every visit I will have in its pages.
by Khadijah A.
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
January 12, 2018
a complex tapestry of poems
hogan’s work is complex and full of metaphors, nature, politics, language, emotions and human soul. this is a must read when you need to lose yourself in something deeper. it’s not an easy or simple read, you have to be present and attentive- but, it’s so worth it!
hogan’s work is complex and full of metaphors, nature, politics, language, emotions and human soul. this is a must read when you need to lose yourself in something deeper. it’s not an easy or simple read, you have to be present and attentive- but, it’s so worth it!
November 21, 2020
A book of poems
Purchased for my college class - Great American Authors, there’s great depth in Hogans writing that both connects to the now and sinks deeper into life. She bridges the wonders of the universe through presence in simple moments.
A good gift idea for anyone who loves poetry.
Purchased for my college class - Great American Authors, there’s great depth in Hogans writing that both connects to the now and sinks deeper into life. She bridges the wonders of the universe through presence in simple moments.
A good gift idea for anyone who loves poetry.
July 14, 2015
loved it!
May 30, 2015
Very beautiful book offering some of Hogan's best. She is an ace though dare I say it her 2nd book selections weren't there for me. The rest, however, powerful and endurance tested.
July 12, 2020
She so good, by which I mean elegant and a genius at evoking feeling. It took me a while to read all the poems simply because I had to keep returning the book to the library (e-books).
October 19, 2025
What do you know about this world, do you remember the forgotten language wild, can you still call it?
From Indios introduction:
Our lives, as aboriginals, are filled with this monologue. I have created it as both a performance piece of a woman interviewed in prison, and also as a long poem, to be sung, spoken, read aloud or in silence, to be thought about or wept over. It is set in the timelessness of our lives. When we say that we crossed over the Trail of Tears, we did. It is in our Native memory. Time is different in the cell structure of bodies created from and on this continent.
Yet I welcome all people, all of whom come from some land, belong to a place, to a history not unlike this one. I welcome them to this story, like the world, with both its sorrows and its great beauties.
FOUND POEM:
Oh traveler, what if the far river had not
been created? What if you looked
at it all aslant? There is to a person a
mystery, the inward map, the sixth sense.
Close your eyes and it comes,
the music of old roads we still
travel together, so far the sound
is all that can find us. We are like
the trees, the insects walk over
our warm skin. Clouds
opening like flowers.
They think we are the earth.
Who will make houses of air with
their words? To be held by the light
was what I wanted
with the certain knowledge
that it is a good thing to be alive and safe
and loving every small thing
every step we take on earth,
waiting to emerge and fall again
from the radiant vault of myself,
this full and broken continent of living.
And in my veins, dear mother, the
beauties of my joyous life
and wind moves move this life,
my voice in the leaves.
And the human is clouds, lung, mist,
and heart, a pulse at the wrist,
and the spirit which belongs to
the mountain breathing,
rising, dissolving the ground.
We have stories as old as the great
seas breaking through the chest,
flying out the mouth, noisy tongues
that once were silenced,
all the oceans we contain coming to light.
when some travelers return and are shining
with light you know, without saying,
that they have been in touch with other worlds.
May the tree of the world, even that which
goes out like an unseen tide and comes in
no longer, may it still bless your heart
if the heart has not gone with it.
Earth has the grace to create
caves of shining crystal
and shifting dunes,
mountains with waters
falling from them, and
I am still on the path,
missing the depth of every
mystery that continues
through the galaxy,
Even if I could live that way
one day, if only, in the
illuminated world of another
code, where this continent
remembers the membrane
between worlds is so thin it breathes
and the invisible ones are here
as we cross times, this line we cross
into a new song breathing like
tides coming and going.
What do you know about this world,
do you remember the forgotten
language wild, can you still call it?
From Indios introduction:
Our lives, as aboriginals, are filled with this monologue. I have created it as both a performance piece of a woman interviewed in prison, and also as a long poem, to be sung, spoken, read aloud or in silence, to be thought about or wept over. It is set in the timelessness of our lives. When we say that we crossed over the Trail of Tears, we did. It is in our Native memory. Time is different in the cell structure of bodies created from and on this continent.
Yet I welcome all people, all of whom come from some land, belong to a place, to a history not unlike this one. I welcome them to this story, like the world, with both its sorrows and its great beauties.
FOUND POEM:
Oh traveler, what if the far river had not
been created? What if you looked
at it all aslant? There is to a person a
mystery, the inward map, the sixth sense.
Close your eyes and it comes,
the music of old roads we still
travel together, so far the sound
is all that can find us. We are like
the trees, the insects walk over
our warm skin. Clouds
opening like flowers.
They think we are the earth.
Who will make houses of air with
their words? To be held by the light
was what I wanted
with the certain knowledge
that it is a good thing to be alive and safe
and loving every small thing
every step we take on earth,
waiting to emerge and fall again
from the radiant vault of myself,
this full and broken continent of living.
And in my veins, dear mother, the
beauties of my joyous life
and wind moves move this life,
my voice in the leaves.
And the human is clouds, lung, mist,
and heart, a pulse at the wrist,
and the spirit which belongs to
the mountain breathing,
rising, dissolving the ground.
We have stories as old as the great
seas breaking through the chest,
flying out the mouth, noisy tongues
that once were silenced,
all the oceans we contain coming to light.
when some travelers return and are shining
with light you know, without saying,
that they have been in touch with other worlds.
May the tree of the world, even that which
goes out like an unseen tide and comes in
no longer, may it still bless your heart
if the heart has not gone with it.
Earth has the grace to create
caves of shining crystal
and shifting dunes,
mountains with waters
falling from them, and
I am still on the path,
missing the depth of every
mystery that continues
through the galaxy,
Even if I could live that way
one day, if only, in the
illuminated world of another
code, where this continent
remembers the membrane
between worlds is so thin it breathes
and the invisible ones are here
as we cross times, this line we cross
into a new song breathing like
tides coming and going.
What do you know about this world,
do you remember the forgotten
language wild, can you still call it?
March 18, 2019
Some of the poems feel so right. I think that her poetry gets stronger, moving toward The Book of Medicines. However, some I wish were tighter. And sometimes, frankly, I was simply lost. Not bad, though. Not bad.
November 23, 2021
If you think I am going to write about someone's god,
that's a mistake. I am sitting by wild strawberries
not yet blooming.
Read
January 3, 2015I am marking this as finished, although I am not certain that’s true—I read this on the principle of surprise, letting them jump out at me, and that might continue to happen. But I think I got most of them.
I have read Linda Hogan’s novels, which are solid but not striking. But this. This is something else. Every poem is a favorite moment: reading “Awake” by the side of a mountain lake, crying over “Partings” on an early Saturday, watching the sun rise to “First Light,” peace at midnight in “The Truth of the Matter.” I knew what I was looking for in the bookstore, and I knew when I had found it. The fact that I know and love all of the writers whose reviews got on the back of the book would have been a good sign, if I had looked. I’ve been carrying this book around for months now like a baby. I highly recommend doing it that way.
I have read Linda Hogan’s novels, which are solid but not striking. But this. This is something else. Every poem is a favorite moment: reading “Awake” by the side of a mountain lake, crying over “Partings” on an early Saturday, watching the sun rise to “First Light,” peace at midnight in “The Truth of the Matter.” I knew what I was looking for in the bookstore, and I knew when I had found it. The fact that I know and love all of the writers whose reviews got on the back of the book would have been a good sign, if I had looked. I’ve been carrying this book around for months now like a baby. I highly recommend doing it that way.
May 26, 2015
Waht I know about poetry is about as long as this sentence. That said, I enjoyed a lot of this collection, especially the way the selections from earlier books showed how some themes repeated and evolved over time. The newest poems are not only beautiful, but pointed, political, and compassionate.
I much prefer the long form of the novel--and Linda Hogan writes excellent novels--, because the metaphors are in context, the themes develop over time, and you can place the characters and events in the larger world. Poetry is too short for this, and the images, mataphors, and cultural contexts aren't always obvious or even available to some readers.
I much prefer the long form of the novel--and Linda Hogan writes excellent novels--, because the metaphors are in context, the themes develop over time, and you can place the characters and events in the larger world. Poetry is too short for this, and the images, mataphors, and cultural contexts aren't always obvious or even available to some readers.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews