Shaman's Circle - Hardcover

Grade 7 Up?The title poem of Wood's latest collection announces its theme: "...The shaman's circle is a fiery wheel/ Of opposites necessary for the world to keep on/turning..." The poems celebrate and commemorate sacred moments in life (birth, marriage, death, beginnings and endings) and the people?family, elders, and others?who give meaning to our existence. Opposites are named or implied: the old ways and the new, grief and love, summer and winter, wisdom and folly?from their tension comes the power of the turning wheel. Many selections have the feel of ritual prayer or recitation, or the quieter air of meditation. They are all serious, but not somber; even poems about aging or death focus on the gifts that endure, especially love. Howell's realistic, expressive style will be familiar to fans of Wood's Spirit Walker (1993), Dancing Moons (1995), and Many Winters (1974, all Doubleday). The artist's mystical portraits of Native Americans combine the timeless, mythic, and universal with the particular personality of each individual. In keeping with the wisdom revealed in the text, the subjects' fine wrinkles, white-threaded hair, and grave demeanor suggest that experience is their teacher. Wood's words are rooted in Taos Pueblo, but the pictures incorporate allusions to the Teton and Dakotas as well. This volume is well up to the standards of the collaborators' previous prize-winners.?Patricia (Dooley) Lothrop Green, St. George's School, Newport,
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the same team that produced Spirit Walker and Dancing Moons, Shaman's Circle by Nancy Wood, illus. by Frank Howell, takes its inspiration from the lives and cosmology of the Pueblo Indians to meditate upon our connections to nature. A typically wordy and didactic stanza reads, "Daylight is nighttime's other face, the one that preceded/ creation and formed a universal vision long before/ human eyes recognized the lessons of leaves and lions." Mystical paintings-e.g., of heads floating in cosmic space-complete the New Age-ish appeal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.