We live not only inside a body but within a story as well, and our story resides in the land as sure as the vision of Dorothea Lange's desperate, run… - Linda Hogan

A bird killed in the name of human power is in truth a loss of power from the world, not an addition to it. ("The Feathers" p15)

For American Indian people the journey home is what tells us our human history, the mystery of our lives here, and leads us toward fullness and strength. These first poems were part of that return for me, an identification with my tribe and the Oklahoma earth, a deep knowing and telling how I was formed of these two powers called ancestors and clay.

The desperate need to articulate this was what went into these early poems, the need to say what hadn't been spoken, to tell an untold story of our lives. They are home speaking through me. Home is in blood, and I am still on the journey of calling myself home.