Pollen Path: A Collection of Navajo Myths Retold

by James Schevill, Joseph Henderson

Book by James Schevill, Joseph Henderson

Genres: Indigenous

205 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1956

About the author

James Erwin Schevill was an American poet, critic, playwright and professor at San Francisco State University and Brown University, and the recipient of Guggenheim and Ford Foundation fellowships. He wrote more than 10 volumes of poetry, 30 plays, many essays, a novel, and biographies of Bern Porter and Sherwood Anderson. His plays include Lovecraft's Follies (1971) based on the life and work of Providence horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.

He was visiting Freiburg, Germany in 1938 when the Kristallnacht riots occurred, and the experience led him into writing and poetry.

In a 1950 letter to Robert Sproul, the president of the University of California, he refused to sign a loyalty oath, at the time a prerequisite to becoming an instructor at the UC Berkeley. Instead he went on to teach at California College of Arts and Crafts and San Francisco State University. In 1981 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art. He died in Berkeley, California in January 2009.

Reviews

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

My top recommendation for those interested in Navajo Mythology. Includes the primary mythology, well written, with personal biography and some analysis in the second half of the book. Very accessible.

[Mills College Library]

398.097 S328p 1998

[Zach]

The Pollen Path is a stirring collection of Navajo myths -- each with the potential to open new vistas, each filled with countless talismans. The appendix is also a treasure trove filled with insights and explorations of Navajo chants, myths, gods, medicine men, medicine women, and sand paintings. The few dozen songs that are included offer so much that it's hard to put into words. Here's a favorite passage from the Mountain Chant:

"There was a maiden who became a bear
And she walked and wandered far.
Far around her spread the land,
But it was not far to her.
Dim in the distance spread the land,
But it was not dim to her."

A psychological commentary is also included, which does a great job opening up some of the symbols. Here's a favorite passage:

"Link makes it clear that the determination of He-Who-Teaches-Himself to undertake such a journey represents the need of an individual to disidentify with the collective norm, to find the depths of his own nature in a journey which carries him through typical dangers, to reach a center which can never be related directly to the outer tasks or satisfactions of life."