Every time I read Momaday, I fall in love with what he is able to do with words. This was just the same for me. A remarkable piece of work to be done enjoyed over and over.

Almost 40 years ago now I sat in an Introduction to American Literature class in my high school. I don’t remember a lot about the class. I remember reading Poe and Hawthorne, Longfellow and Thoreau. Back then it was mostly white male authors in the syllabus. There were exceptions. One of those exceptions really stood out to me: N. Scott Momaday.

I am embarrassed to say I cannot remember which of his poems we read from the textbook. I do remember liking it a lot. A member of the Kiowa Nation, Momaday was already a Pulitzer Prize winner. I was only 16 or 17, a white kid in a suburban high school, but I remember his writing jolted me. I may have forgotten the poem, but I never forgot the name.

Many years later, I am in a very different place. Now a grandfather, my student days and my youthful dreams long since left behind, I barely remember that teenager who sat in the class. A few days ago I would have said that everything has changed since then. I was wrong. N. Scott Momaday still has the power to jolt me with his writing.

Earth Keeper is a short book of reflections on the relationship of people, especially his own people, to the earth. Each reflection is itself relatively short, usually a little over one page in length. I don’t think any of them fill a third page. Some of them are stories, traditional or personal. Others are almost prayers. They offer appreciations of the earth, not so much the planet (though that is there) but the soil and the landscape and the wind and the water and the life. They also lament the damage we humans have done to the earth. One reflection tells of listening one night to the sounds of dogs and coyotes, sounds that were drowned the next day by the roar of chainsaws.

Family is also part of this communion with the earth. Momaday tells a story in the first person, then closes by saying, “This happened a long time ago. I was not there. My father was there when he was a boy. He told me of it. And I was there.” Immediately I thought of the stories my own father told me, stories of his boyhood, of his military service (he never saw combat but did meet my mother during his stint in the army), even stories from my own pre-verbal childhood. Some of those stories have become my own, stories where I was not there--but after he told me, I was there with him. Intellectually I know the difference. Emotionally I still am connected.

In one wistful story, he remembers his father and grandfather describing the sounds and appearance of prairie wolves. They were long ago hunted to extinction, now howling only in memories and legends. He closes this lament by asking, “Will I tell my grandchildren, I wonder, of animals they will never see?”

Momaday writes with passion and urgency. There is music in his prose. Many times I closed my eyes and thought through the paragraph I just read, listening to it with my mind’s ear, enjoying the lilt of the thoughts as they told a story or offered a “prayer” or spoke a lament. As the author approaches 90, he has become an elder statesman of American literature. I might argue that he is more than that: a sage, a prophet, an oracle. Earth Keeper is beautiful and poignant, elegiac and graceful. Should I live another 40 years, I suspect I will still remember my encounters with this author.

Earth Keeper by M. Scott Momaday is a slight, quietly reflective, minimally illustrated and yet impactful little book. Momaday muses on the Earth and on Native faith, on stories passed down to him by his family, on his connection to nature and his grief for its destruction. The book hovers somewhere between prose and poetry, with tender musings on the natural world around us and our own mortality, sometimes joyful, sometimes more somber.

“It is the present and the possibilities of a future that must concern us. Ours is a damaged world. We humans have done the damage, and we must be held to account. . . . There was a time when ‘man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent,’ this New World, ‘commensurate to his capacity for wonder.’ I would strive with all my strength to give that sense of wonder to those who will come after me.”

Come to this book with an open heart, when you are feeling open to reflection and hearing a wise voice gently reminding us to do better. And why it is that we must do better. At only 65 pages, Earth Keeper could be a relatively fast read, or, as I read it, could be savored a bit at a time over a week or so. Either way, I recommend it as a reminder of how we should care for the Earth, and why, until it is our time too to go to the “farther camps” among the stars.

Thank you to #NetGalley and Harper Collins for granting me a digital #advancedcopy of #EarthKeeper in exchange for my honest review. The quotation is from the published edition.

Earth Keeper by N Scott Momaday is a short collection that reflects on the author’s (and in turn our) responsibility to the Earth. To take care of it and to amend the destructive path we’ve gone down, by reconnecting with the Earth. The book is broken into two sections between Dawn and Dusk. Dawn is set in a pre-contact world in which our care for and connection with the world around us was much deeper and reciprocal. Dusk introduces industrialization, colonization, and our disconnect. It’s abrupt and a stark contrast to the first half of the book. It’s Momaday’s reflection on his life, and his ancestors’ lives, as an Earth Keeper and I felt like he was passing the responsibility on to us. To remind us.

Some favorite quotes:
-“We were ashamed, but the earth does not want shame. It wants love.”
-“How many lifeless things are placed each day between us and the living earth?”
-“Will I give my children an inheritance of the earth? Or will I give them less than I was given?”

I really loved this book. It’s hard to put into words, but I just felt this deep sense of connection as I read his words. Absolutely loved it.

As a nature lover, this book touched my soul. Mamaday shares stories handed down from his Kiowa ancestors that tell of his peoples' ties to the earth. His respect for nature and his culture come through with such impact through his descriptive and lyrical writing. My heart soared and broke as I was reading his words. The one-paragraph chapters have perhaps a greater impact than more lengthy chapters would: it makes you stop and think about what you just read.

Thank you to HarperCollins Publishers for an advanced reader's copy of this book.

"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

Discover: This collection of short prose pieces from the Poet Laureate of the Kiowa nation urges readers to respect and value and keep the natural world and all it offers.

One of the greatest living Native American authors and poets, N. Scott Momaday (his Kiowa name is Tsoai-talee, "Rock Tree Boy") offers insights into the ways that nature connects our spirits and our lives. This collection of vignettes and art celebrates how Earth, story, and people are all in this moment holding nature and selves in delicate balance. Will appeal to readers of all ages, on all continents, as a profound call to care for Earth.

I have shared N. Scott Momaday's poem "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee" with hundreds of students during creative writing poetry workshops. It is a delight to read this hopeful prose, and to heed his invitation to live "in good relation" to Earth and to each other.

Readers of House Made of Dawn or other Momaday works will recognize some of the legendry included in his latest offering, Earth Keeper. A small volume of prose poems interspersed with original artwork, it centers on the symbiotic relationship of humanity and the earth, Momaday’s linguistic art and visual art share a style of distilled beauty, where each word and each brushstroke are pregnant with meaning. They encourage a slower pace, a deeper, richer contemplation than contemporary Americans normally undertake.

Passages of pure imagery resonate deeply, while sections, few though they are, of overt commentary seem to break the spell and become the least effective vehicles of meaning. Nevertheless, Earth Keeper will easily find its place alongside the rest of Momaday’s canon in quintessential American Literature.

Thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for an Advance Release Copy in exchange for an honest review.

An important story of indigenous America. I am most familiar with horror/fantasy by indigenous authors and loved this nonfiction story.

Momaday has some beautiful passages and short snippets of connected experiences to the Earth. My problem is that I just finished Braiding Sweetgrass and absolutely loved it - shouldn’t compare just connected more with it than Earthkeepers. I loved Momaday’s message and my favorite parts were actually his drawings.

N Scott Momaday is an elegant writer, and his love of the Earth shines brilliantly on every page. This book of poems and essays comes at just the right time for those currently in need of hope for the Earth, and his gentle wisdom on being an "Earth Keeper' is a healing balm. Short, simple, but with depths of emotional intensity, this work is highly recommended.

“There are those who believe that the earth is dead. They are deceived. The earth is alive, and it is possessed of spirit.“

A beautiful series of short stories about our connection to the earth, that each build on each other and read more like poetry. I appreciated the simplicity of it all, the language is beautiful and it all flows so smoothly.

“The sky was so deep that it had no end, and the air was run through with sparkling light.”

Part one describes the beauty of the earth & how deep our connection with it is and should be with nature. The stories are soothing and beautiful, it makes you feel at peace.

Part two makes you feel more uncomfortable. It takes a look at modern culture at construction and changes humans have implemented that blemish nature. It reads as plea to not ruin the beauty and importance of the Earth.

I knew from the beginning that he was describing Arizona because I could picture the exact landscapes he painted. I appreciated this love letter to the landscape, animals, and his community.

This is such a beautiful book and a deeply personal novel about the West and a deep connection to that land. Marvelous.

It is tempting to read this book all in one gulp, but it should be savored - read slowly and thoughtfully. It contains both wonder and a terrible sadness for where we are now. It advocates responsibility without ever seeming to preach. Deceptively simple, it is deep and poetic. Belongs on every shelf of environmental literature.