The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket

September 15, 2024
Deeply rooted in her Navajo heritage, Drake, the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Poetry Series, has crafted a lyrical and poignant collection punctuated with memory, love, and cultural survival that reads as both urgent and ancient. She writes, "I feel god in this Taco Bell tonight," but also proclaims, "When I was brought into the world I looked back." With each poem, as she writes from the present and the distant past, she creates a persistent cross-generational presence ("Your mother says the turquoise / tear drops are a shield"). Music is threaded throughout, including that of Mildred Bailey, Hank Williams, and My Chemical Romance. The atypical perspective of time may also arise from Drake's ability to recreate stories of cosmology, creation, and existence, from the myriad star forms that throw light against a dark sky to the "once-children of the ocean [that] orbit the seascape." Every line resonates with resistance to the violence against and attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and with beauty and rhythm that keep the poetry resonating much like an unforgettable song.

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Starred review from September 16, 2024
Drake’s excellent debut, winner of the 2023 National Poetry Series Award, enlivens and expands the traditions of Navajo poetry with arresting imagery, pop culture references, and queer touchstones. Drake delivers an intergenerational exploration of identity and heritage, with familial memories of a “childhood home/ that smelled of dryer sheets” and a reservation radio station that played Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash alongside “drumbeats and throaty covers/ of well-loved tunes put on/ by some local boys’ gas station// banjo and hot-rocket guitar.” There are frequent allusions to Navajo beliefs about the cosmos: “Coyote threw/ up a basket of stars to shatter the black/ into brilliance... Do the ghosts, too, feel comforted/ in the haze as you sing me/ the birth of the Milky Way?” In “for mildred bailey, in three parts,” Drake celebrates the incredible talents of the eponymous Native jazz singer, “her wide voice rivering the smoke/ Her lips heartberry-/ red in the lights.” Drake soars with a simultaneously frenetic and restrained energy, demonstrating a polished skill that does nothing to dull her electric delivery. It’s a noteworthy achievement.