SOURCE: “Knowing All the Way Down to Fire,” in Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory, edited by Lynn Keller and Cristanne Miller, University of Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 163-83.

In the following essay, Jahner examines the works of Hogan and Joy Harjo in terms of their respective use of metaphor to express cultural ideas.

Native American women's poetry often appeals to readers with a tenacity that does not, however, cancel the insecurity that many experience over how to think about features of it that derive from unfamiliar cultural histories. This is often the case even for other Native Americans because there are so many different and contrasting indigenous cultures. But precisely because of the many discursive challenges that writers and readers have to confront if the poetry is to communicate beyond an immediate locale and audience, Native American women's poetry provides an exemplary array of different metaphoric mediations...