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Pause For a Moment
Navigation is a poetry collection that serves as a compass through personal memory, cultural history, and collective grief. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?
Navigation is truly a collection, a gathering of poems that I have written over a number of years about a variety of topics. When I realized that there were certain themes connecting various poems, I decided I could organize them into a cohesive collection. The topics range from exploring childhood/teenage memories to bridging nature and the human experience. The power of home and the importance of place also play a large part in this book, as does connecting to my Indigenous roots.
Were there any poems that were particularly difficult to write? If so, why?
The most difficult poems for me to write were the ones about my late father. He was such a talented, intelligent man who never had the opportunity to achieve his dreams, so I find myself returning again and again to the idea of an unfulfilled life. It is always painful to lose a parent, but I think the grief is magnified when that parent’s life was never completely realized.
How has this poetry book changed you as a writer, or what did you learn about yourself through writing it?
My first full-length book, unlike the two that followed, was also a collection of personal poems. When it was published, I felt some trepidation about exposing myself, laying bare some very private aspects of my life. Navigation also contains some extremely personal poems, but I think over the last few years, I have learned to feel less self-conscious about my poems. It is my hope that readers will be able to connect with the honesty and perhaps see themselves and their own lives in my experiences.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your poetry?
I hope my readers can find a thought, a phrase, or even a word that will make them pause for just a moment and reflect. I wish for my readers to find in my work something that they can relate to in their own lives, even if we come from totally different regions or backgrounds. I truly believe that one of the main purposes of poetry is to help us connect as human beings.
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—Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come From Is Gone
I have read much poetry. I know many poets. I believe the job of good poetry and good poets is to move their readers, and oh Lord, has Linda Neal Reising’s new book, Navigation, moved me. What can I possibly say to prepare a reader for what lies ahead as they navigate through the four parts that make up this book? The opening poem of Part I, “After Learning That a Woman and Her Baby Were Killed in the Bombing of a Ukrainian Maternity Hospital” seizes you in its grasp and propels you page after page. The Americana, the well-chosen epigraphs, the Native understanding of the land and the trials of poor families during hard times are masterful. This is a book not to be missed.
—Ron Wallace, author of Life Is a Disappearing Act
If one were sailing the sea of life “in a little paper boat,” the waypoints leading to some proverbial safe harbor would be easily recognized along the course so capably charted in Reising’s Navigation. With her distinctive imagination…the cardinal“slipped off her wings, and chose to walk all the way back to heaven,” and her exceptional percipience of real life experiences, Reising reveals the mastery of her poetic skills. And in spite of life’s obstacles, Reising suggests a safe harbor is within sight…a place where “sparrows sky-write lovelorn letters, where cedars keep sentry…” where “the apricot tree grows tiny moons.”
—Karen Kay Knauss, poet, Oklahoma Book Award winner for SAND, At the Mercy of Wind
Navigation
Linda Neal Reising’s Navigation is a poetry collection that serves as a compass through personal memory, cultural history, and collective grief. Split into four parts, the book traverses everything from Native American identity to coming-of-age nostalgia to haunting reckonings with war and environmental collapse. At its core, this is a book about mapping trauma, tenderness, and survival in lyric form.
What really struck me was the way Reising’s poems blend elegance with grit. In “After Learning That a Woman and Her Baby Were Killed in the Bombing of a Ukrainian Maternity Hospital,” Reising writes of a cardinal’s remains as “feathers so pale a red they verge on pink,” a line that knocked the wind out of me. It’s delicate, yes, but brutal in its imagery. There’s no hiding from sorrow here. She doesn’t preach, she mourns. And in doing so, she lets you mourn too. That balance of beauty and ache shows up again in “Earth Day Lockdown,” where goats and jackals reclaim cities during COVID, as if nature’s revenge is not violent but theatrical. It’s weirdly funny and deeply sad.
I also loved the nostalgic, rough-edged sweetness of her childhood and youth recollections. “Dolly’s Debut” is a standout, so vivid, I felt like I was there in front of that new Zenith TV set, eating popcorn and watching Dolly Parton sparkle onto the screen for the first time. The mix of admiration and longing is infectious. Similarly, “Partial Eclipse” captures the awkward magic of being a seventh-grader with a shoebox solar viewer and a million questions you’re too young to answer. Her ability to make the small moments feel cosmic and vice versa is what gives the book so much punch.
Then there’s the raw nerve of her poems about generational trauma, especially those tied to her Cherokee heritage. “Education of a Sixth-Generation Cherokee Refugee” gutted me. Her grandmother didn’t pass down traditions, only superstitions and fear. That sense of loss, of something beautiful never even getting the chance to take root, hangs heavy. And in “Disappeared” and “The Poetry of Their Names,” Reising doesn’t flinch from the horrors of Native boarding schools and the epidemic of missing Indigenous women. These poems are like open wounds, necessary, unforgettable, hard to read, and harder to ignore.
Navigation is a powerful, heartfelt book for readers who love poetry that tells stories and stirs things up. It’s not airy or academic, but it’s grounded, lyrical, and bold. If you’ve ever felt lost, Reising might not hand you a map, but she’ll sit with you in the wilderness.
Pages: 90 | ISBN : 1639806903
LITERARY TITAN 