One Stick Song

"One Stick Song" is a superb blend of poetry and prose by Sherman Alexie. The back cover notes that the author is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, and indeed the main topic of this book is American Indian life and literature. Although Whitman is invoked in one of the pieces ("The American Artificial Limb Company"), I found Alexie's voice in this piece to remind me more of Kurt Vonnegut and George Carlin. The book is a mixture of outrage, wacky humor, and tenderness, with some really cutting satiric elements.Some of my favorite pieces are as follows. "The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me" is an excellent, irony-rich extended prose poem which looks at, among other things, the business and politics of Native American literary production. This piece contains the memorable line, "Poetry = Anger x Imagination." "Open Books" is a satiric poem about poets and poetry itself. In this poem Alexie writes, "Let us now celebrate the lies / that should be true because they tell us so much." "The Mice War" is an unsettling, violent poem that takes place on a reservation landfill. This is just a small sampling of the treasures in "One Stick Song," a book which moves Alexie onto my list of favorite United States poets.

From the very first chapter this collection of poems blew me away. Sherman Alexie provides a raw and gritty insight into the contemporary American Indian ideology. His poems jump to life inside your imagination and seem to not want to die. Alexie helps people of all different backgrounds come to a better understanding of how things are in the real American world of misconceptions about American Indians and their beliefs and customs. He also challenges the way some people may view their own cultural lineage. At times his poems are very jovial and lighthearted, and at other times they are stark and quite sad. This is one of the best books i have ever read. I recomend this book to anyone who wants to see a different side to the way old ideas are challenged in new ways.

One Stick Song is Sherman Alexie's most personal work yet. In these poems and stories, he reveals a side of himself that he has never truly exposed before... possibly even to himself. It is obvious that Sherman is finding the deepest parts of his soul in recent years, probably helped along by the birth of his as revealed by the final poem in the book "Sugar Town." I have read all of Alexie's works to date, and mostly in the order they were written and I have enjoyed reading the growth of this truly great writer. >>>>>>><<<<<<< <br /> <br />A Guide to my Book Rating System: <br /> <br />1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper. <br />2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead. <br />3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted. <br />4 stars = Good book, but not life altering. <br />5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

Call me biased, but I consider this Alexie's best colleciton of poetry yet. In it he moves away from his typical sad and revealing descriptions of the life he saw as a child on the res, and moved more into himself, revealing things to us about himself that we only guessed before. This makes his past works make more sense and gives readers a greater understanding of what goes on in Alexie's mind. These poems and stories seem older, wiser somehow. I believe Alexie has jumped a rung in this book, out of the "infantile" works of yore and into something greater. He becomes a Master of the Masters.

It should come as no surprise to any viewer of Smoke Signals that the writing, almost the singing voice of Sherman Alexie is hypnotic, even addictive. The beauty of the song invites you deeper and deeper through layer upon layer until you are completely immersed in all its glory; then you are belched up with a wry joke like Jonah beached by the whale. All observations may be intact, but you have been to another place, and must see the world differently ever after. No matter how afraid we are of the enlightenment and its obligations, the experience and its effects continue to allow us the opportunity to do the necessary healing work. To call it cathartic seems trite and shallow, even false. It is magical. I knew a man who drowned in three inches of water collected in a tire track. I wish I could name him here but tribal laws forbid me to name the dead. These laws are aboriginal and more important than any poem. But I want to give him a name that means what I say so I name him Hamlet, King Lear Othello, Noah, Adam. from Water 3, One Stick Song.Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer