Poetry. "How refreshing to come across a book like Katherine Hastings's marvelous CLOUD FIRE, rich and verdant in formal experiment and range. Mixing lyrics, narratives, curses, blessings, spells, and unabashed love poems, the work is hard-won and honest, generous and rigorous. In poem after poem Katherine Hastings casts her ever-vigilant, observing eye, sharp as it is poignant. Her deepest concern seems our perilous locale and planet: 'My city whose streams are rock doves and parrots / whose bright arm is a spring board for love and suicides' and yet 'we breathe here better than anywhere, distressed.'"--Gillian Conoley

Poetry. "If there's such a thing as fierce Buddhism, Katherine Hastings' NIGHTHAWKS finds it. Here is nature in minutely observed, embroidered detail, juxtaposed with terse and stark observations keyed from Rexroth's 'holiness of the real.' Hastings is unafraid: she writes fearlessly of subjects such as the slaughter of children at an elementary school in Connecticut, the death of a young black man in a subway station, and opens a brave and unblinking lens on a lover's cancer. In backdrop, though, always: the steadiness of nature flourishing, brilliant colors amid the unanswered questions."--Gerald Fleming "Rooted in what Hastings calls the 'momentary forever, ' these marvelous poems, so rich with detail and so full of duende, explore the paradoxes of transience. Yes, the poet reminds us: 'The alarm is set and ticking' for each least thing in the living world: 'A boy made in the image of Lorca; turkey vultures... with wings like shredded violins.' Still, the 'eyes of the world' (eyes of the poet ) 'are always hungry...'; so the poet must read every 'tune placed in her] beak // where the lust of one tear holds / every note of joy, of sorrow / trembling under the stars.' And these new poems do insist on inhabiting hard realities--a beloved's cancer diagnosis; the public murder of an innocent young man by a police officer--but also, in 'Perseid From a Park Bench, ' two lovers wish on a meteor falling through the night sky, and Hastings reminds us: 'We humans do this, place hope on a ball of dust passing through a comet's tail.'"--Susan Kelly-DeWitt "These poems capture a double exposure where earth and sky meld to map what is close and what is seemingly out of reach. Hastings' horizon shifts from the reality of earth bound oceans to the celestial ocean where we swim in a sea of stars. Like ancient astronomers, she sees connections often missed by the casual eye. She becomes in effect a soothsayer of stars and taps into the music of their stillness as they witness the coincidental paths we take in our lives, the stars above us 'an angel apiece/burning so far out of reach.'"--Colleen McElroy

Wendake, Odanak, Wôlinak, Pointe-du-Lac, Kahnawake, Kanesatake, Akwesasne, Kitigan Zibi are communities located all along the St. Lawrence River valley and its tributaries. They have been home to descendants of the Huron-Wendat, Algonquin, Nipissing, and Iroquois nations. These First Nations have in common the fact that their ancestors were allies of the French and had converted to Christianity. Historians have ignored these nations described as 'domiciled Indians ('sauvages domiciliés') by the French administrators. Jean-Pierre Sawaya carefully studied how an alliance of such diverse 'missions' was created, developed and conducted to become The Seven Nations of Canada. How did this confederation come about? Who took part and what were their roles? The answers are mined in the massive colonial archives. Seven Fires is original research at its best, combining detailed analysis and systematic investigation, that has enabled the author to dispel the tenacious colonial myth about irrational, submissive, and fatalistic Indigenous peoples. Readers will discover forward-looking people motivated by a deep desire for independence and solidarity.