Poetry at its most satirical and courageous. A tremendous book.--Seamus
Heaney
Few voices in American literature are so honest and daring.--Mark Strand
One of our most brilliant poets.--Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
I feel the primal grain and temper of the genuine here.--William Heyen
A lament, a protest, an inextinguishable song.--Sherod Santos
Among the best and most original poets in America.--Stanley Kunitz
Nothing short of splendid.--Robert Nazarene
The kind of energy found in the poems of William Carlos Williams and
Gary Snyder.--Joseph Bruchac
These poems tell harsh truths of hopelessness and genocide. The
confusion of children whose religion is forbidden; the ironic poverty of
a lottery winner; an alternate American history in which Columbus turns
and sails away--in deceptively simple language, we hear the protest of
survivors. 'Indian' is not a derogatory word. It's what we call
ourselves.
AFTER A SERMON AT THE CHURCH OF INFINITE CONFUSION
At ten, Mary Caught-in-Between
came home from sunday school,
told every animal and bird and fish
they couldn't talk anymore,
told her drum it couldn't sing anymore,
told her feet they couldn't dance anymore,
told her words they weren't words anymore,
told Raven and Coyote they weren't gods anymore,
said god was a starving white man
with long hair and blue eyes and a beard
who no one loved enough to save
when they nailed him to a totem pole.
John Smelcer has written over forty books of poetry and prose. He is
a member of the Alaskan Ahtna tribe.
