cover image Earth Always Endures: Native American Poems

Earth Always Endures: Native American Poems

Neil Philip, Niel Philip. Viking Children's Books, $19.99 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-670-86873-5

Neil Philip brings together 60 chants, prayers and songs in Earth Always Endures: Native American Poems. Often haiku-like in their spareness, the quietly magnificent poems sing of war, love, the land and animals: they do not seem to have been chosen for children in particular. This is a fine and serious collection of a largely unrecorded poetic tradition. Over 40 of Edward S. Curtis's (1868-1952) elegant duotone photographs of Native Americans accompany the text.