Spirit Matters: White Clay, Red Exits, Distant Others

by Gordon Henry

A major new collection of dazzling, surrealistic, entirely original poems by an American Book Award-winning Ojibwe author, whose work appears in two new Joy Harjo-edited anthologies.

In parcels and particles, letters, images, repetitive themes, rhythms and sounds, "Spirit Matters" invites views into shadow spheres, of creative memory, reinvention of storied characters and place, as reminders of how poetry might turn longing, back to the very sound memory makes as we honor the imaginative lives of people and place. A collection of poetry, informed by irretrievable letters of loss, love, trauma, forged by musing on imagined relatives, living, dead, yet to be, shaped by spirit of places of we can never return to without understanding the living power of memory, story and song.

Genres: Poetry

174 pages, Paperback

Published June 14, 2022

Reviews

[Ashley Bostrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite poems:
-Abstract on Reminders
-Dear Venus Zhaawanigiizhik
-Venus Zhaawanigiizhik: How I Learned to Love
-Another Spirit Fire Under Empire
-Crushed Akiiwenzii (A Disintegrating Grandfather Hologram)

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5.

Philosophical and ancestral. This was a contemplative collection with wonderful detailed imagery and powerful undercurrents. On the philosophical side which doesn’t always work for me but I did enjoy it.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprising and beautiful collection. So glad to have found this work, the last twenty pages of it are all poems deeply etched into my heart.