The Death of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems

by N. Scott Momaday

I believe poetry is the highest form of verbal expression.

Story is the marrow of literature.

A poem is a moral statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

I read to find inspiration. I write To restore candor to the mind.

The artist, concentrated, Sees what is before him, The poet sees what is not.

If you could have that one day back, the one that you have kept a secret in your soul, what day would it be?

I saw beyond time, into timelessness.

the perfect poem in Tibet it is written and there it is lost

Between birth and death is the way of the warrior, And there is nothing at either end but a dream.

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded in 1879. Before it was closed in 1918 ten thousand American Indian children were sent there to be shorn of their native identity, to be “civilized.” The great experiment was a great failure. Less than one tenth of the students graduated, many more died at the school, traumatized by disease, loneliness, and despair. Those who returned to their homes or who were dispersed into the dominant society were unable to live wholly in either world; they were dislocated in their minds and hearts.

first flowers, The whir of a bird’s wings, And the March sun sustain her.