The definitive collection from a groundbreaking Native American poet
whose work traces the fault lines between past and present, real and
surreal, comedy and tragedy to unveil a transcendent new vision of the
world Hailed by the Bloomsbury Review as "the nation's foremost
contemporary Native American poet" and by Sherman Alexie as "the best
poet in Indian Country," Ray Young Bear draws on ancient Meskwaki
tradition and modern popular culture to create poems that provoke,
astound, and heal. This indispensable volume, which contains three
previously published collections-Winter of the Salamander (1979), The
Invisible Musician (1990), and The Rock Island Hiking Club (2001)-as
well as Manifestation Wolverine, a brilliant series of new pieces
inspired by animistic beliefs, a Lazy-Boy recliner, and the word songs
Young Bear sang to his children, is a testament to the singularity of
the poet's talent and the astonishing range of his voice. "I'm not
exaggerating when I tell you that Ray Young Bear is the best poet in
Indian Country and in the top 46 in the whole dang world. Sacred and
profane, profound and irreverent, his poetry pushes you into a corner,
roughs you up a bit, maybe takes your wallet, and then gives you a long
kiss goodbye." -Sherman Alexie "Ray Young Bear's work is the gift of an
anguished imagination marked with grief and wild humor. His writing
alternately lashes and heals, but ultimately instructs from a deep
vision of the world." -Louise Erdrich "These are remarkable poems. I
read them over and over again, and I become more and more convinced that
they proceed from a native intelligence that is at once ancient and
contemporary, straightforward and ironic, provocative and insightful.
The poet speaks from a kind of timeless experience; his voice is the
voice of the coyote or singer of Beowulf or the inventor of words. The
Invisible Musician is a work extraordinarily rich and rewarding." -N.
Scott Momaday "It was clear from Ray Young Bear's earliest poems that he
was a poet of great ability. He has gotten better. The physical detail
is ground, and there are mysterious interminglings of water and air that
hold the worlds together. The Invisible Musician is rightly titled and a
fine book." -Robert Bly "[Ray Young Bear is] a national treasure."
-Robert F. Gish "Ray Young Bear is magic. He writes as if he lived
10,000 years ago in a tribe whose dialect happens to be modern English."
-Richard Hugo "No one, absolutely no one, tells the tribal story like
Young Bear." -Elizabeth Cook-Lynn Ray Young Bear is a lifetime resident
of the Meskwaki Settlement in central Iowa. His poems have appeared in
numerous magazines and anthologies, including Virginia Quarterly Review,
New Letters, Prairie Schooner, the Iowa Review, the American Poetry
Review, and the Best American Poetry, and have been collected into three
books: Winter of the Salamander (1980), The Invisible Musician (1990),
and The Rock Island Hiking Club (2001). He also wrote Black Eagle Child:
The Facepaint Narratives (1995), a novel combining prose and poetry that
was heralded by the New York Times as "magnificent." Its sequel,
Remnants of the First Earth (1998), won the Ruth Suckow Award as an
outstanding work of fiction about Iowa. The recipient of a grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts, Ray Young Bear has taught creative
writing and Native American literature at numerous schools across the
United States, including the University of Iowa and the Institute of
American Indian Arts. A singer as well as an author, Young Bear is a
cofounder of the Woodland Singers & Dancers, which performs contemporary
and traditional tribal dances throughout the country.
