He saw himself as a poet

 I’ve been reading M. Scott Momaday’s collection of poems The Death of Sitting Bear and wondering why I had not thought of him primarily as a poet.

Perhaps I had been sidetracked by critics who praised his fiction. Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn, and he wrote some fine short stories. But in his preface to The Death of Sitting Bear, he talks about his heritage as a Native American and about his father, a member of the Kiowa tribe. Then he says:

I am a poet. I believe poetry is the highest form of verbal expression. Although I have written in other forms, I find that poems are what I want and need most to read and write. They give life to my mind.

 

That’s clear. I have a new appreciation of Momaday the poet. That seriousness runs through his collection.

Jim Harrison was the same way. Harrison wrote some wonderful — and critically acclaimed — fiction and made a lot of money as a screenwriter. But he considered himself a poet. He valued poetry.

• Sources and notes: N. Scott Momaday, The Death of Sitting Bear; New York: Harper, 2020, p. xiii. For a note on the title poem, see ‘Momaday: ‘The Death of Sitting Bear,’ May 17, 2024.