Crow Quotes Revisited

by MariJo Moore

Many years ago, I had a premonition of starting a little publishing company, and so I did. Crow Quotes was the first book published by rENEGADE pLANETS pUBLISHING. This was in 1996. At the time, I was admonished for being a self-published writer; one well-known book reviewer refused to review my books because of this. My, my, how times have changed. I have always been a bit ahead of my time. (The first edition of the book was published on hemp.) 

So it goes. Through the past years I have written many other books: novels, poetry, fiction, non- fiction, and edited several anthologies of Indigenous writers, all which have been teachings and sharings. However, Crow Quotes has always come back to my mind, in bits and pieces of the quotes, reminding me so much about life. And by receiving, even recently, letters and emails from readers who relate how have they kept this little book by their side, relishing the quotes - some over twenty years. 

Several months ago I was given another premonition - it was time to offer Crow Quotes again. Time for the book to expand and reach out into the world in a new format. And so I have. Thus, Crow Quotes Revisited. 

Sample of quotes:

"Keep in mind you are a part of the whole. 
 The future is planted within you." 

"Want to confuse a crow? 
Try explaining human religions." 

Cover art by noted Pueblo artist Virgi Ortiz. 

For more info and to order, please visit www.marijomoore.com/booksandart.html 

Thank you for supporting an independently owned company. 

MariJo Moore 
www.marijomoore.com

Art Works

by Robert Bensen

            Sara Bates, “Honoring Circle” (sculpture)

            1

            Before a shop built downtown sealed over a spring and a little creek,

excavation turned up the bones of a man, his pipe and some shards of clay

            that came from this embankment above the Susquehanna—

clay that made the brick that made the shop that hides the creek

            that flows through pipe that’s made with clay that made the pipe they dug

beside the man they found not long ago, long after he had turned to clay.

            2

If spirit lives in everything and everything in spirit

            then the young woman with a virus raging in the head

who has fallen asleep beside Sarah's “Honoring Circle” while the rest write

            may have dreamed herself one day as pleasant as this

beside a pretty little creek above a bluff and drank from its talkative source

            in the warmth of a complicated sun, an agitated sun

flaring with seeds and pods and leaves and shells and petals,

            a composed sun from whose center the crossed roads carry

what they always carry down their seven shining paths

            until the red sun of evening stripes her face

and she flutters awake to find herself alone

            with this work, this disk of gifts on the floor, walk about

and wonder what on earth she saw in it, and what she sees. 

 An excerpt from Before by Robert Bensen

© Robert Bensen. All rights. Reserved.

Robert Bensen has published six collections of poetry, including Orenoque, Wetumka & Other Poems, and Before. His work has earned an NEA poetry fellowship, the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Harvard Summer Poetry Prize, and Illinois Arts Council and NY State Council on the Arts awards. His scholarship in the Caribbean and Native America has produced essays, studies, and editions, won fellowships from the NEH and Newberry Library, and led to teaching in St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. He is the editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Hartwick College (1978-2017).  He teaches at SUNY-Oneonta, and conducts a poetry workshop at Bright Hill Literary Center, Treadwell.

www.robertbensen.com