N. Scott Momaday
N. Scott Momaday
Navarre Scott Momaday— known as N. Scott Momaday — is a Native American author of Kiowa descent. His work House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. Momaday received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 for his work that celebrated and preserved Native American oral and art tradition. He holds 20 honorary degrees from colleges and universities, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth27 February 1934
CountryUnited States of America
As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.
Sometimes, I think the best kind of poem is one in which there is an acute balance between what is humorous and that which is very serious. That balance is very hard to strike. But it can be done.
The spiritual reality of the Indian world is very evident, very highly developed. I think it affects the life of every Indian person in one way or another.
I am a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society; I visit sacred places such as Devil's Tower and the Medicine Wheel. These places are important to me, because they've been made sacred by sacrifice, by the investment of blood and experience and story.
I have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud.
Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.
Although my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountian, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood
My line of vision was such that the creature filled the moon like a fossil. It had gone there, I thought, to live and die, for there, of all places, was its small definition made whole and eternal
They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.
The turn of the century was the lowest point for the devastation of Indian culture by disease and persecution, and it's a wonder to me that they survived it and have not only maintained their identity, but are actually growing stronger in some ways. The situation is still very bad, especially in certain geographical areas, but there are more Indians going to school, more Indians becoming professional people, more Indians assuming full responsibility in our society. We have a long way to go, but we're making great strides.
To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.
Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.
Loneliness is an aspect of the land.
There was only the dark infinity in which nothing was. And something happened. At the distance of a star something happened, and everything began. The Word did not come into being, but it was. It did not break upon the silence, but it was older than the silence and the silence was made of it.