Natalie Diaz (1)Rezensionen

A rich and delicious collection, unafraid to get uncomfortable or strange or painful, but attuned to the beauty and humor in such discomfort, absurdity, pain.

This book had been on my to-read list for so long that every time I saw it in a bookstore it was so familiar I felt uncertain as to whether I had already purchased a copy at some point. (I had not.) But then it was on the display for National Poetry Month at my local library, so I finally checked it out and read it during the Feminist Book Club Readathon.

I think all the build-up actually made it harder for me to enjoy this book. Because I felt like it was fine, I enjoyed it. There were individual poems that moved me, that inspired me, that surprised me. But somehow I stayed removed from them all. I did not love this collection quite like I wanted to. (I may also have been influenced by the fact that this library copy REEKED of cigarette smoke. I mean, it was really bad. it made being near enough this book to read it unpleasant.)

Themes of Native identity and culture, queerness, the importance of water, womanhood, myth, permeate these poems. I am glad that I finally read this, I am just a little surprised that I am unlikely to go buy a copy to keep for myself. I will still seek out her previous collection, though.

I consistently enjoy Diaz's poetry. Overall I preferred When My Brother Was An Aztec, but I really treasured the river poems. First for the connection to ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au. And then for the explicit response to Urrea's the Water Museum. I did not know the connection when I chose these two books, or when I decided to read them this month, but I'm delighted to discover this conversation.

Excellent, just excellent. Couldn't have chosen a better 1,000th listing.

I will be rereading and rereading and annotating this book - it takes turns being heartbreaking and breathtaking.

Postcolonial Love Poem won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and wow I can see why. I had already read a couple of the poems that had been shared on tumblr, and I loved Natalie Diaz's writing. She's so so good: passionate and angry and grieving and heartfelt and poetic and in love; a master of her craft. This is a short book, but I had to put it away for a couple of days instead of reading it in one sitting because it's so intense. It will stay with me for a long time. Her poems all feel deeply personal, regardless of whether or not they actually happened in real life.
I loved this and recommend it highly, although of course the poems are often difficult to read (some topics covered include missing & murdered indigenous women, water protestors, America's anti-indigenous history and mentality, etc.). Themes I kept seeing: green, bulls/horns, the land/desert, rivers/water...

Read the full review, including trigger warnings, at https://fileundermichellaneous.blogspot.com/2022/05/book-review-postcolonial-lov...

A wonderful collection of poetry deeply steeped in the author's Native American heritage. The poems here have a wide variety of subject matter. Some are environmental in nature, some involve her family with a sports bent and sensual love poems that exalt in the exploration of her lovers body. I love the variety of length, depth and structure from poem to poem. I certainly can see why this collection received all the acclaim that it did. I loved it.

This won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. It was justly deserving.

Natalie Diaz’s poems are filled with life: being a part of the whole of the earth, especially the Colorado River.

But she also unflinchingly looks at her brother’s addiction and the ruin it has brought to his life.

Some are uncomfortable for me – I count sexual encounters as intensely private but she fearlessly explores them with the woman she loves.

My favorite poem is “The First Water is the Body”. It’s a long poem, but the poem in its entirety can be read here:

https://orionmagazine.org/article/women-standing-rock/

Like Diaz's more recent collection, this one also focuses on being Native, her brother and his addiction, and love. More of this collection focuses on her brother. Her and especially her parents' fear, frustration, and helplessness with the situation is palpable and heartbreaking.

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry 2020

Diaz is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe and grew up at Fort Mohave Indian Village near Needles. She is now a professor of poetry at ASU.

This book includes poems focusing on a a few themes: being indigenous, love/loving, the Southwest deserts, her brother and family, and physicality. She uses certain vocabulary a lot--minerals/rocks, bones and body parts, Greek characters and terms. I had a few favorite poems, but for many I felt like I was missing something. In the Notes she explains the origins of many of the poems, which reflect songs I don' know, or work I have not read or read long enough ago that I don't recognize it. In many ways this book felt like the intended audience are very literate poets/students who read, critique, and review each others' work. A pod of poets, you might say.

My favorites: The Mustangs (about her brother playing high school basketball); The First Water is the Body (reflections on Mohave belief that they are part of the Colorado/it is part of them--not in metaphor); If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert (magnificent language--"I will swing my lasso of headlights/ across your front porch".

I need to read her earlier collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, I think I might like it more.

When My Brother Was An Aztec/he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents/every morning. It was awful.

Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was An Aztec is a legit masterpiece. Go read it, now. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Books of poetry are sometimes navel-gazing, self-absorbed bores but this one is simply amazing. I slurped it down in two short commutes and a stolen hour in a cafe after work because these poems are absolutely mesmerizing. I can’t praise them highly enough.

I love writing that makes me feel like I’ve stepped into another life for a moment and these poems belong to a life heavily lived. There’s such a strong sense of place, character and narrative here, based in Diaz’ Mojave heritage and personal family challenges–specifically her brother’s cycles of addiction and the difficulties that creates within the family. The language, English seasoned liberally with Spanish and Mojave, is absolutely gorgeous. I alternated between being near-tears and making a stank face and saying “Girl you wrote this!” in my head.

I think what I love most about this collection is that there is a balance between the beauty of the language, the technical precision of the craft, and a sense of narrative that places its poems solidly within a very real life and emotions. It reminded me a lot of Yrsa Daley-Ward’s bone or Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous–like those books, Diaz’s collection is really in a class of its own.

This was one of my favorite reads of 2019, and I can’t recommend it enough. *whew* 5 out of 5 stars. .

If you liked this review, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, or check out my blog. Peace, fellow readers!

An extraordinary book of poetry. The kind of poetry that gets into your lungs like pure oxygen and makes you feel ready to fly.

Natalie Diaz is back! I tore through this collection, expecting to be impressed, humbled, and she delivered. While it didn't have the same thematic coherence as When My Brother Was an Aztec, there is a profound interrogation of her identity and experience and poems that slide into erotic mythology between eddies of sampled texts.

What I enjoyed most about this collection is Díaz's ability to imbue the mythic onto the realism of her poetry. This amplifies the power of the imagery of the poems, many unrelenting in their bleak assessments of interpersonal relationships. In particular, "No More Cake Here," is a poem steeped in ritual, while also being a black comedy in which life turns more tragic than death.

Disturbing and powerful. Diaz disembowels the ravages an addict subjects the family to - the hopelessness of even achieved love when need is near infinite - the sustained rage at arbitrary inequalities - and spills the guts some times clearly, frequently with haunting obscurity.

This was terrific. I don't read poetry with the same kind of critical filter that I do prose, but I really appreciate when a poem or collection knocks me sideways, and this one did. Compelling work about the Native American experience, addiction, love, and loss, with wonderful use of language and imagery. This was a library book but I'm tempted to buy a copy so I can go back to the well, because a lot of this was just brilliant.

Heartbreaking and heartrending and utterly, utterly compelling. So smart, so referential, so filled with metaphors that perfectly describe pain and longing and regret and wishes and sadness and loss ... and beauty and lust and love. Some poems I particularly enjoyed or found moving: "Why I Hate Raisins," "Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis," "The Facts of Art," "Prayers or Oubliettes," "I Watch Her Eat the Apple."

Tremendous book. I wish there were more Natalie Díaz books out there for me to read.

I love how honest this book is with regards to being in a family where there is addiction. She writes her poetry with a raw, blunt edge. Some of the poems are hilarious, in spite of the serious themes. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, one of the best collections of poetry I've ever read.

When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz, published by Copper Canyon Press and ordered for me by my local bookstore Novel Places, is a culture clash of Native Americans integrating into mainstream society and the struggles the children of these family have reconciling their home lives with the differences they find at school and among their new childhood friends and society. The narrator battles with her mother about why she cannot have a sandwich like the white kids rather than raisins, and insinuates that she’d rather be like the white kids. By the same token, the narrator experiences first hand the bullying of the white kids in her neighborhood because of her ethnicity — a dichotomy that resurfaces throughout the collection.

“The Red Blues” (page 11-13) is a creative look at a young girl’s blossoming into womanhood, getting down to the gritty reality of menstruation.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2012/08/when-my-brother-was-an-aztec-by-natalie-diaz...