Flood Song
A poetic sequence where Navajo tradition and urban life scrape against one another.
Work Information
An imagistic poetry collection shaped by the friction between tradition and the present.
Sherwin Bitsui’s collection links Native tradition and modern cityscape in dense, moving language.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Copper Canyon Press
- Published
- 2009-10-01
- Pages
- 120 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 17.78 x 0.76 x 24.13 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781556593086
- ISBN-10
- 9781556593086
- Price
- 2788 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American
"Sherwin Bitsui's new poetry collection, Flood Song— a sprawling, panoramic journey through landscape, time, and cultures—is well worth the ride."— Poets & Writers “Bitsui’s poetry is elegant, probative, and original. His vision connects worlds.”— New Mexico Magazine “His images can tilt on the side of surrealism, yet his work can be compellingly accessible.”— Arizona Daily Star “ Sherwin Bitsui sees violent beauty in the American landscape. There are junipers, black ants, axes, and cities dragging their bridges. I can hear Whitman's drums in these poems and I can see Ginsberg's supermarkets. But above all else, there is an indigenous eccentricity, ‘a cornfield at the bottom of a sandstone canyon,’ that you will not find anywhere else.”— Sherman Alexie Native traditions scrape against contemporary urban life in Flood Song , an interweaving painterly sequence populated with wrens and reeds, bricks and gasoline. Poet Sherwin Bitsui is at the forefront of a new generation of Native writers who resist being identified solely by race. At the same time, he comes from a traditional indigenous family and Flood Song is filled with allusions to Dine (Navajo) myths, customs, and traditions. Highly imagistic and constantly in motion, his poems draw variously upon medicine song and contemporary language and poetics. “I map a shrinking map,” he writes, and “bite my eyes shut between these songs.” An astonishing, elemental volume. I retrace and trace over my fingerprints Here: magma, there: shore, and on the peninsula of his finger pointing west— a bell rope woven from optic nerves is tethered to mustangs galloping from a nation lifting its first page through the man hole—burn marks in the saddle horn, static in the ear that cannot sever cries from wailing. Sherwin Bitsui ’s acclaimed first book of poems, Shapeshift , appeared in 2003. He has earned many honors for his work, including fellowships from the Witter Bynner Foundation and Lannan Foundation, and he is frequently invited to poetry festivals throughout the world. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Sherwin Bitsui was born in 1975 in Fort Defiance, Arizona. He is Diné (Navajo) and has a profound connection to his culture. His acclaimed first book of poems, Shapeshift, appeared in 2003. He has been honored by the Witter Bynner Foundation, and his work has appeared widely, including American Poet, The Iowa Review, Frank, and Red Ink.
Reviews
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A stunning book. A selection from this book was featured on Poetry Daily and I was intrigued by the economy, compression and use of language. Still, you don't imagine that anyone could maintain such virtuosity for seventy pages. Wrong. I am a voracious reader of modern poetry; this book stunned me. Surprising nouns and verbs juxtaposed in surprising ways at every turn. The commonplace constantly elevated to the extraordinary. The everyday brutality of fact, as it presents itself in nature, appreciated for its kaleidoscopic thusness. And I read the whole book (in one sitting) before I discovered that the cover illustration was painted by the poet as well. Rarely have I seen a better marriage of cover and content. The painting tells you everything you need to know in terms of form, color and energy--and all the rest--about the poetry. The people at Copper Canyon have come through again, bless them. All that and, if the title (Flood Song) and the arrangement of the work throughout the book (such intoxicating celebration of negative space) mean anything, it is one poem. No titles. No numbers. No pretension whatsoever. The words working closely with the space to create a single arc of meaning. One poem. It is a rare thing for a poet to be so comfortable with telling you all there is to know about himself. Sherwin Bitsui does that here. Ultimately, that's poetry.
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Sherwin Bitsui's voice is so beautiful and strong force not only among current Native American writers, but among the national collection of active poets. I would recommend this book to anyone with a Native American background or anyone who is interested in the perspective.
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This collection was challenging as HECK, but so worth it ultimately. It's one I definitely want to go back to--it was my first venture back into poetry in a long time, and it was really a challenge to parse. Bitsui's poems are so full of images that it is borderline overwhelming and can be hard to follow at times, but it definitely sweeps you along even as it also jars you out of your comfort zone. The last two poems especially are so beautiful and shattering and hopeful and I really loved them. I recommend reading this but giving it a lot of time to sit with.
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Very captivating reading. Highly recommend it.
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Needed for class, well written