Summer of Black Widows FROM THE PUBLISHER
In 1992, Hanging Loose Press introduced the poetry of Sherman Alexie. His first collection, The Business of Fancydancing, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. "Mr. Alexie's is one of the major lyric voices of our time, " wrote reviewer James R. Kincaid. Since then, Alexie's poems, stories and novels have brought him many honors and an international following of readers.
A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, now living in Seattle, Alexie covers a territory that starts with the minute details of reservation life and reaches out to encompass the world in all its variety.
"Sherman Alexie's recent success as a novelist overshadows the fact that he is one of the best young poets writing in America today... his poems resonate with brutal honesty and tie the reader into knots. (This book) proves Alexie is a poet first and a fiction writer second."
."..an impressive mosaic of emotions and subjects, deployed with wit, intelligence and haunting insights... Alexie's vision is Whitmanic in his all-embracing love of humanity."
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
For prolific poet and novelist Alexie (First Indian on the Moon), "Indian" culture is not a frozen set-piece, but a field of vital, co-mingling influences that includes playing basketball, watching for Sasquatch or admiring Fred Astaire. His cultural pantheon is apparent in the sixth of seven "Totem Sonnets": "Lenny/ Edgar Bearchild/ Holden Caulfield/ Tess// The Misfit/ Sula/ Mazie/ Tayo// Cacciato/ Cecelina Capture/ Hamlet/ Jim Loney// Daredevil/ The Incredible Hulk." Moving among sites of personal and historical tragedy, as well as joy (the Spokane reservation in Washington State, Brooklyn's F Train, Dachau), the first-person speaker of these poems is shadowed by remembrance and loss: "On the top of Wellpinit mountain, I watch for fires, listen to a radio powered by the ghosts of 1,000 horses, shot by the United States Cavalry a century ago, last week, yesterday." While lacking the raffish elegance of Frank O'Hara (though engaging elegies for James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are included here) and with the acknowledged influence of Ted Berrigan, Alexie, at his best, opens to us the complexity and contradiction of a contemporary multicultural identity. Repeatedly invoking the liar paradox (perhaps because "Indians... don't believe in autobiography"), Alexie poses a question for all of us: "Do these confused prayers mean/ we'll live on another reservation/ in that country called Heaven?" (Oct.)
Library Journal
The seven sections of poet/novelist Alexie's (Indian Killer, LJ 8/96) new collection are intensely elegiac, documenting ravages to a Native American identityand, one finally feels, to contemporary American identity itself. Alexie's search for meaning gives "tragic features" of "indigenous people" a sense of nobility as they struggle to maintain dignity in a world given over to hatred of the authentic. Intergenerational native dances, powwow, drum music (entertainment and prayer), and traditional song provide somber rhythm to correlate places Alexie visits with "secrets" of Native American culture always in the back of his mind. "The reservation waits for no one," Alexie concludes. "Acre by acre, it roars past history." The legacy of American history is difficult. This worthy poetry makes an important contribution to coming to terms with it.Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.
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