Sign-In
Cart
Cloud Runner: Poems
Hardcover
Publisher Price: $26.99
ISBN13: 9781324123651
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: Oct 13 2026
Pages: 96
Language: English
Losing a child is one of the most unreconcilable griefs. In Cloud Runner, Joy Harjo reckons with the unspeakable pain of losing her daughter: Reason has no home in this hour, she writes. Despite a devasting loss, Harjo constructs a shrine to human resilience, reminding us that the most profound revelations can appear in our darkest hours: I now know why we construct ceremonial epics of mystery and beauty, / Of enemy and failure: it is so we can pick up our burdens / And go on.
Harjo's magical poems are known for weaving myth, song, and spirit. In this searing volume, her poems become essential witnesses to history, especially in our current era of compounded loss: mass shootings, missing and murdered Native women, climate disaster, and political violence. Cloud Runner explores how all grief may be connected; it is a testament to poetry's power to speak what is unspeakable, to touch what the mind cannot carry.
From Cloud Runner:
I am Cloud Runner, you whispered, as I rinsed dishes and looked
out the window, the sun flaring dusky gold through our story. I
dried my hands and went outside to read the clouds.
Remember me in my children and their children, you sang.
Remember me in poetry.
Remember me when it rains, when the plants rise up in
green to drink.
Remember me in butterflies.
And then, you were gone.
Also from
Harjo, Joy
The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans
Smith, Jaune Quick-To-See
Ahtone, Heather
Harjo, Joy
Hardcover
Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light: A Play by Joy Harjo and a Circle of Responses
Harjo, Joy
Page, Priscilla
Paperback
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Alighieri, Dante
Pitavy, Francois
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Lao Tzu
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paperback