Here's the myth: Native Americans are people of great spiritual depth, in touch with the rhythms of the earth, rhythms that they celebrate through drumming and dancing. They love the great outdoors and are completely in tune with the natural world. They can predict the weather by glancing at the sky, or hearing a crow cry, or somehow. Who knows exactly how? The point of the myth is that Indians are, well, special. Different from white people, but in a good way. The four young male Native American poets whose work is brought together in this startling collection would probably raise high their middle fingers in salute to this myth. These guys and "guys" they are—don't buy into the myth. Their poems aren't about hunting and fishing or bonding with animal spirits. Their poems are about urban decay and homelessness, about loneliness and despair, about Payday Loans and 40-ounce beers, about getting enough to eat and too much to drink. And there is nothing romantic about their poetry, either. It is written in the vernacular of mean streets: often raw and coarse and vulgar, just like the lives it describes. Sure, they write about life on the reservation. However, for the Indians in their poems, life on the reservation is a lot like life in the city, but without the traffic. These poets are sick to death of the myth. You can feel it in their poems. These poets are bound by a common attitude as well as a common heritage. All four—Joel Waters, Steve Pacheco, Luke Warm Water, and Trevino L. Brings Plenty—are Sioux, and all four identify themselves as "Skins" (as in "Redskins"). In their poems, they grapple with their heritage, wrestling with what it means to be a Sioux and a Skin today. It's a fight to the finish.
“Embracing an identity of twenty-first century west coast urban squalor, Trevino Brings Plenty creates a madly cruising momentum barreling down the page instantly akin to narrowing proximities within a panorama of cityscapes, apartments and dives. The resulting irresistible fervor brings a flavor of first to a long-awaited banter. Hold on; this one is fully loose.”—Allison Adelle Hedge Coke “A laugh heard around the world, a mandatory message for the rest of America. Trevino Brings Plenty fires off this poetic shot from the northwest coast and its reverberations are necessary. Necessary for an understanding of the Indian world - its humour, its pain, its absolute refusal to fit the mold of the other's expectations of what our red world should be.”—James Thomas Stevens “Trevino L. Brings Plenty's work is deceptively straightforward. The rich values of human struggle rumble between lines of the voice and vicissitude of marked page. These poems are viscously inked illustrations of bleak scenes obscured in popular American culture.”—Elizabeth Woody
Here's the myth: Native Americans are people of great spiritual depth, in touch with the rhythms of the earth, rhythms that they celebrate through drumming and dancing. They love the great outdoors and are completely in tune with the natural world. They can predict the weather by glancing at the sky, or hearing a crow cry, or somehow. Who knows exactly how? The point of the myth is that Indians are, well, special. Different from white people, but in a good way. The four young male Native American poets whose work is brought together in this startling collection would probably raise high their middle fingers in salute to this myth. These guys and "guys" they are—don't buy into the myth. Their poems aren't about hunting and fishing or bonding with animal spirits. Their poems are about urban decay and homelessness, about loneliness and despair, about Payday Loans and 40-ounce beers, about getting enough to eat and too much to drink. And there is nothing romantic about their poetry, either. It is written in the vernacular of mean streets: often raw and coarse and vulgar, just like the lives it describes. Sure, they write about life on the reservation. However, for the Indians in their poems, life on the reservation is a lot like life in the city, but without the traffic. These poets are sick to death of the myth. You can feel it in their poems. These poets are bound by a common attitude as well as a common heritage. All four—Joel Waters, Steve Pacheco, Luke Warm Water, and Trevino L. Brings Plenty—are Sioux, and all four identify themselves as "Skins" (as in "Redskins"). In their poems, they grapple with their heritage, wrestling with what it means to be a Sioux and a Skin today. It's a fight to the finish.
Brings Plenty has come into his own power with this new book of poems. These are the poems of a hardcore rez visionary who is '. . . map(ping) the spirit world . . . .' Each poem carries a light born of struggle, and like vision, each illumination has its cost...Personal history is utterly tied to the historical DNA of family, a place. Through the journey of these poems, a map emerges. In this map, you will find a way home."--Joy Harjo, Mvskoke poet, musician, performer, professor
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