Poems From the Deep: A Native Man's Journey through Heaven and Hell

My poems are a collection of joy, amazement, pain, grief, exhilaration and dreams and visions. Each one is an expression of a certain time, an event, a person, or maybe an illusion. My Anishinabe and Dakota elders, my family, my mentors have all had an impact on my work over a 30 year period. My perspective, as many Native perspectives do, has a unique lens. This lens offers a landscape not often seen by many, but easily identified as the deep, dark, and sometimes dead soul of many an Indian man. They say we came from the sky, and from the earth. I say we were not born of Adam and Eve, nor from Noah, or the Tribes of Israel. Maybe in my Poems from the Deep you will see where we come from and who we truly are, or maybe you will only see me. Come with me, don't be afraid, I'll bring you back. Wopida Tanka Ihetchetu Wana. (Now that is all, Thank you) r.p.leith

Ron Leith is Anishinabe/Dakota who grew up in St. Paul, Mn, and completed high school at Red Lake High School, Red Lake, Mn in 1970. Prior to graduating he attended Kent State University in 1970 and witnessed the shooting of students by the Ohio National Guard. After working for the American Indian Movement and Indian Country for 30 years he is now retired and lives with his wife, and near to his children and a busload of grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Princeton, Minnesota where he writes full time.