Strong Feather - by Jennifer Reeser (Paperback)

About the Book

The poems in Strong Feather center on a Native American Indian female character of the author's creation-a poet/prophet/warrior of sorts. All the poems are masterfully deployed in form, but they vary in tone and content.

Book Synopsis

In Strong Feather, Jennifer Reeser revisits the salient themes of Indigenous-her acclaimed, award-winning preceding poetry collection. While the poems in Strong Feather reprise the exposition of a Native American heritage juxtaposed with a mixed European ancestry, many of them center on a Native American female character of the author's creation-a poet/prophet/warrior of sorts. Displaying a masterful command of form throughout, Strong Feather also includes personal poems, translations, and tales from Cherokee and other indigenous traditions. The result is a spellbinding and uniquely engaging collection of storytelling, mythmaking, and inspirational musings, energized by a keenly interrogated mixed-race heritage.

End of the winter, middle March,

Waking, I find it beneath my quilt

Clinging to linens the hue of larch,

Softer and whiter than milk when spilt-

One petite feather. Its hollow "hilt"

Pointing toward me, is curved and long,

Slightly translucent, and at a tilt.

How has this feather stayed so strong?

. . . .

PRAISE FOR STRONG FEATHER:

What I love most about Jennifer Reeser's poems is their swagger. Not conceit (there's none of that) but rather a delightful confidence in her art and in her judgments. Maybe that's communicated by the title of her new book, before we even get to the first poem. Can a feather be strong? You better believe it.

-John Wilson, Englewood Review of Books + Marginalia Review of Books

Jennifer Reeser's Strong Feather continues her personal legacy of applying classical technique to make another world visible. Like Countee Cullen of the Harlem renaissance, she is a master of rhyming forms that present life beyond the expected edges of formal verse. Witness the marvelous "Shape Shifter," a Petrarchan sonnet like no other, or the stunning "The Courier du Bois and the Savage," an ekphrastic poem written as an English ode but conveying a modern message about equality. Her elegant use of rhyming couplets in "White Lady" concentrate the poem's illumination of contrasting lives. A hundred pages of such treasures will bring you lives you might not otherwise meet and pleasures you would otherwise miss.

-Arthur Mortensen, Expansive Poetry Online

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jennifer Reeser is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently, Strong Feather (Able Muse Press, 2022), and Indigenous (Able Muse Press, 2019), which was awarded Best Poetry Book of 2019 by Englewood Review of Books. Reeser's poems, reviews, and translations of Russian, French, along with the Cherokee and various Native American Indian languages, have appeared in Poetry, Rattle, the Hudson Review, Recours au Poème, Light Quarterly, the Formalist, the Dark Horse, SALT, Able Muse, and elsewhere.

A biracial writer of European American and Native American Indian ancestry, Reeser was born in Louisiana and now divides her time between Louisiana and her land on the Cherokee Reservation in Indian Country near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation of which her family is a part.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR STRONG FEATHER:

Reeser's layered latest (after Indigenous: Poems) considers her Native American heritage in poems that demonstrate a powerful and expansive command of form. . . . The feather provides an apt metaphor for the fragile yet beautiful humanity that Reeser renders, despite "all the grief we wear." . . . Reeser's speakers assume the voice of many historical indigenous figures, as well as a character, Strong Feather, who is compared to a "wounded, wizened bird." Strong Feather invites the reader to look at the world again, to wonder about age-old questions, "Why should you take by force what's yours through love?" and apply their lessons. This excellent collection is full of artistry and meaning.

-Publishers Weekly, December 2022

What I love most about Jennifer Reeser's poems is their swagger. Not conceit (there's none of that) but rather a delightful confidence in her art and in her judgments. Maybe that's communicated by the title of her new book, before we even get to the first poem. Can a feather be strong? You better believe it.

-John Wilson, Englewood Review of Books + Marginalia Review of Books

Jennifer Reeser's Strong Feather continues her personal legacy of applying classical technique to make another world visible. Like Countee Cullen of the Harlem renaissance, she is a master of rhyming forms that present life beyond the expected edges of formal verse. Witness the marvelous "Shape Shifter," a Petrarchan sonnet like no other, or the stunning "The Courier du Bois and the Savage," an ekphrastic poem written as an English ode but conveying a modern message about equality. Her elegant use of rhyming couplets in "White Lady" concentrate the poem's illumination of contrasting lives. A hundred pages of such treasures will bring you lives you might not otherwise meet and pleasures you would otherwise miss.

-Arthur Mortensen, Expansive Poetry Online

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER REESER'S INDIGENOUS:

By considering the mixing rather than the distinction of her birthright, Reeser welcomes readers into her experiences of the past and present state of Amerind-European relations.

- John Nichols, The Front Porch Republic

In this work full of masterful lyricism, you will find a history once hidden, a story passed from one generation to the next, and traditions held in the hearts of indigenous peoples.

-The Poetry Question

Jennifer Reeser is our indigenous poet following most closely in the footsteps of the great William Jay Smith.

- A. M. Juster, Claremont Review of Books

Indigenous approach[es] the grand while avoiding grandiosity. . . . The collection's central concern, and the engine behind its most forceful and illuminating moments, is the duality inherent in biracial identity.

- Jonathan Diaz, Englewood Review of Books