One Stick Song - Hardcover

Alexie, Sherman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1882413776 ISBN 13: 9781882413775

Publisher: Hanging Loose Press, 2000

Synopsis

Poetry. Native American Studies. Sherman Alexie's poems, fiction, and essays have won him an international following since his first book, THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING, was published to great acclaim in 1992. SMOKE SIGNALS, the film he adapted from one of his stories and coproduced, enlarged his audience still further. Alexie's honors include awards from the NEA, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, and the Washington State Arts Commission, and a citation as One of the 20 Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40 from GRANTA magazine. An enrolled Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie lives in Seattle with his wife and son.

About this title

About the Author:

Sherman Alexie's poems, fiction, essays and films have won him an international following since his first book, THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING, was published in 1992. SMOKE SIGNALS, the film he adapted from one of his short stories and co-produced, enlarged his audience still further. Alexie's awards include the Stranger Genius Award in Literature, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children's Literature in Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature as well as honors and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Foundation, and a citation as "One of 20 Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40" from Granta magazine. An enrolled Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie lives in Seattle with his wife and sons.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Distinguishing poems from prose in this mixed-genre collection is simple: the poems feature line breaks and copious repetition. To readers who require further elucidation, Alexie offers this inane equation: "Poetry = Anger x Imagination." Even if that were true, much of his anger about the mistreatment of Indians (not, he firmly declares, "Native Americans") in America is diluted (divided?) by sentimentality. The material, often about reservation life, appears to be autobiographical, although Alexie seems to enjoy challenging readers' perceptions of reality-especially white readers. "Why Indian Men Fall in Love with White Women" (a frequently recurring theme, incidentally) is set in a donut shop, although "it wasn't / a donut shop but something else entirely." The desired effect of such a gesture must be irony-Alexie avers elsewhere that "Indians recognize irony when [they] see it." But the author himself must not see it when he sarcastically rebukes a critic for inquiring about the oral tradition ("It doesn't apply at all because I typed this. And when I'm typing, I'm really, really quiet"), since almost none of the poems works effectively on the page. This is the stuff of slams. Still, there is much welcome humor in Alexie, and many of the prose passages about his reservation childhood are imbued with a touching lyricism. One wishes for more poems like the fine, if ponderously titled, "A Poem Written in Replication of My Father's Unfinished Novel Which He Would Read to His Children Whenever He Was Drunk."Novelist Alexie (The Toughest Indian in the World, p. 400, etc.) ultimately has two things to declare in this book: he is a poet and an Indian. But the evidence supports only the latter claim. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hanging Loose Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1882413776
• ISBN 13: 9781882413775
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 91