Blood Wolf Moon - by Elise Paschen (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

"A magical map of memory and vision."--Dean Rader, author of Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry

In her mesmerizing sixth poetry collection, Blood Wolf Moon, Elise Paschen weaves constellations throughout, of stars and birds and light and darkness and beauty and horror and nature and humans and history, making shape and meaning of what's around us and even who we are.

In this riveting sixth poetry collection, Paschen explores the story lines of her Osage heritage. The core of the book grapples with a dark period of American history, "The Reign of Terror," when outsiders murdered individual members of the Osage for their oil headrights. Paschen searches her cultural past and family history in poems about the land, ancestors, childhood, loss, nature, transformation, flight and language.

In this cinematic book, she builds drama in overlapping narratives, reinventing ways to approach the line on the page. Described by poet Timothy Donnelly as "one of today's most formally astute poets," Paschen opens Blood Wolf Moon with the long poem, "Heritage," a bracelet of crown poems, then shifts registers to formal poems and prose sequences. Poet and editor Ester Belin calls the concluding poems with their use of Osage language, "significant leaps into literary sovereignty." Blood Wolf Moon Captivates with its emotional intensity and unrelenting quest for the translation of identity. It's a book you can't put down.

Review Quotes

"I have a name / 𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 𐓘𐓜𐓣́͘𐓟." These are the final lines of "Heritage," a brilliant series of crowns that begins Elise Paschen's remarkable Blood Wolf Moon. In poems both lyrical and conversational, both traditional and experimental, Paschen explores what it means to name one's personal and tribal past while looking for the language to aptly articulate our present condition. A magical map of memory and vision, Blood Wolf Moon connects the poet to Oklahoma, Chicago, France, her children, her ancestors, the Osage language, the Wahzhazhe, and even Killers of the Flower Moon. Paschen's poems chart the many paths to the poet's identity, but they also illuminate our own journeys. Blood Wolf Moon is smart and sad and beautiful and haunting. I love this book. It is a revelation."
-Dean Rader, author of Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry

"Elise Paschen's powerful new book of poetry, Blood Wolf Moon, is the culmination of investigating contradictory layers of familial and cultural heritage. The epigraph comes from an Osage song, "To the door of the House of Mystery I have come," such an appropriate invitation to this collection. The heritage of parentage is most potent in this living, however, in that configuration is the ongoing mystery the mother root provokes in daughters, especially when your mother belongs to the world, not just the domestic sphere. Paschen is always formally aware. In this endeavor, the formal weave embraces give, and she finds a taut freedom. She flies. This is her best book."
--Joy Harjo, former US Poet Laureate

"The poems that comprise 'Blood Wolf Moon' create a narrative of exploration in which Paschen uses her personal history to reach into the deep crevices of Osage history. Her voice, while filled with love for her heritage, the natural world and poetry itself, rises and falls with anger, sadness and outrage. Her poetic style is as smart as it is lovely."
--Donald G. Evans, writer for New City Lit

"Paschen's adept distillations of deep traumas, determined survival, and complex reclamation are astute, moving, and breathtaking."
-- Donna Seaman, writer for Booklist

Paschen invites us, through her example, to take the courageous act of finding our name as Americans and write ourselves into being...Blood Wolf Moon stands as a testament that, as a country, we will only be complete and resilient enough to confront the challenges of our futures if we examine our past, atone for it, and find our true name."

- Rey M. Rodriguez, writer for Chapter House Journal

About the Author

Elise Paschen, an enrolled member of the Osage Nation, is the author of Tallcheif, The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize) and Houses: Coasts. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she received the Garrison Medal for poetry. She holds MPhil and DPhil degrees from Oxford University. Her poems have been published widely, including in Poetry magazine, the New Yorker, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and The Best American Poetry. She is the editor of The Eloquent Poem and has edited or coedited numerous other anthologies including the New York Times bestseller, Poetry Speaks. A cofounder of Poetry in Motion, Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.