"We shall not sever ourselves from the earth," writes N. Scott Momaday in Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land. "We must chant our being, and we must dance in time with the rhythms of the earth. We must keep the earth." This is precisely what Momaday does with his powerful and moving collection of short prose work, steeped in stories of his life and offering readers an urgent call to respect the earth we live on.
Momaday (The Death of Sitting Bear), a Pulitzer Prize winner (for A House Made of Dawn in 1969) and Poet Laureate of the Kiowa nation, has a long history as an artist, poet and novelist. Though Earth Keeper is more a collection of essays or prose than formal poetry, it is impossible to deny the poetry of his words, which reflect the majesty and beauty he sees (and encourages readers to see) in the world around him. "The earth is a house of stories," after all, and Earth Keeper is a testament to that tradition.
Part memory and part meditation, part poem and part prayer, Earth Keeper is a short but powerful collection that holds its arms out to the world, asking to be read again and again. "I make a prayer for words," writes Momaday. "Let me say my heart." That heart is evident on every page of Earth Keeper, a reminder that body, soul and earth are inextricably woven together, and to deny that connection is to deny one's very humanity. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm