The Darkening Land: Poems

By Tom Holm

In Cherokee oral culture, seven warriors travel westward to the realm of the dead, a place called the Darkening Land, to retrieve the Sun's Daughter. For a Cherokee warrior like Marine Tom Holm, Vietnam was in the west like the Darkening Land. When the warriors of myth returned with the Sun's Daughter, she escaped and turned into the Redbird, beautiful and free. For a Vietnam veteran like Holm, return trailed trauma, and escape was haunted by death and damage. In The Darkening Land, Holm returns once more, reclaiming his experience and his place in the world through poetry, plainspoken verse that connects the pain of damage and loss to the healing powers of beauty and belonging.

Holm's poetry conjures the past yet ever-present realities of combat, of the fear brought on by night, the sweetness of packages from home, the overwhelming reckoning embodied in the vast black wall in Washington, D.C., with its names of so many who truly journeyed to the Darkening Land. Along with the pain and loss, his poems speak of the possibility of finding hope in ceremony, community, and the natural world. This is a poetic world touched by humility and humor, horror and kindness, a return from the Darkening Land.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806197668
• ISBN13: 9780806197661
• Release Date: June 2027
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 102 Pages
• Weight: 1.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"