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
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.
As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.
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.
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.
I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages.
It is here that I can concentrate my mind upon the Remembered Earth. It is here that I am most conscious of being, here that wonder comes upon my blood, here I want to live forever; and it is no matter that I must die.
If you believe in the power of words, you can bring about physical changes in the universe.
Her name is Ago, and she belonged to the last culture to evolve in North America.