SOURCE: "Paula Gunn Allen and Joy Harjo: Closing the Distance between Personal and Mythic Space," in American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring, 1983, pp. 27-40.

In the following excerpt, Ruppert discusses Allen's use of personal and mythic space in her poetry.

Much of Allen's work is a search for meaning, an attempt to understand natural harmony and to place the individual in that fusion of person, land, and spirit. Each moment is placed on a web of history, natural harmony and traditional understanding. Through this perceptive act, the moment is given significance such as in the poem "Jet Plane/Dhla-nuwa," where the flight on the plane is seen in scientific historical terms, personal historic terms and in mythological terms or, as in "Affirmation," where Grandmother Spider's webs and thoughts are seen throughout the world and the narrator sees "each journey retracing some ancient myth."

Allen's stance is a highly...