The Darkening Land: Poems

Tom Holm

Jun 2027 · University of Oklahoma Press

Ebook

102

Pages

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This book will become available on June 8, 2027. You will not be charged until it is released.

About this ebook

In Cherokee oral culture, seven warriors travel westward to the realm of the dead, a place called the Darkening Land, to retrieve the Sun’s Daughter. For a Cherokee warrior like Marine Tom Holm, Vietnam was in the west like the Darkening Land. When the warriors of myth returned with the Sun’s Daughter, she escaped and turned into the Redbird, beautiful and free. For a Vietnam veteran like Holm, return trailed trauma, and escape was haunted by death and damage. In The Darkening Land, Holm returns once more, reclaiming his experience and his place in the world through poetry, plainspoken verse that connects the pain of damage and loss to the healing powers of beauty and belonging.

Holm’s poetry conjures the past yet ever-present realities of combat, of the fear brought on by night, the sweetness of packages from home, the overwhelming reckoning embodied in the vast black wall in Washington, D.C., with its names of so many who truly journeyed to the Darkening Land. Along with the pain and loss, his poems speak of the possibility of finding hope in ceremony, community, and the natural world. This is a poetic world touched by humility and humor, horror and kindness, a return from the Darkening Land.

About the author

Tom Holm (citizen of Cherokee Nation/Muscogee descent) is the author of numerous books on Native American veterans, including Ira Hayes: The Akimel O'odham Warrior, World War II and Strong Hearts, Wounded Souls: Native American Veterans of the Vietnam War. He is also the author of three novels. Holm is professor emeritus of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. In the U.S. War in Vietnam, Holm served in Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines.

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