From Publishers Weekly
Whether slyly identifying irony as a white man's invention, or deftly moving from prose-like multilayered narratives to formal poetry and song structures, this fifth collection from poet (The Business of Fancydancing; etc.), novelist (Indian Killer; etc.) and screenwriter (Smoke Signals) Alexie demonstrates many of his skills. Most prominent perhaps is his ability to handle multiple perspectives and complex psychological subject matter with a humor that feeds readability: "Successful non-Indian writers are viewed as well-informed about Indian life. Successful mixed-blood writers are viewed as wonderful translators of Indian life. Successful Indian writers are viewed as traditional storytellers of Indian life." Poems such as the title one, a haunting chant for lost family, and "The Theology of Cockroaches," do some vivid scene setting: "...never/ woke to a wall filled with cockroaches/ spelling out my name, never/ stepped into a dark room and heard/ the cockroaches baying at the moon." At times Alexie allows his language, within the lineated poems almost exclusively, to slacken into clich?. The opening, multipart prose piece "The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me" is arguably the strongest in the book, juxtaposing roughly chronological anecdotes with "An Incomplete List of People I Wish Were Indian" and the formula "Poetry = anger x imagination." Other poems tell of "Migration, 1902" and "Sex in Motel Rooms"; describe "How it Happens" and "Second Grief"; and develop "The Anatomy of Mushrooms." Alexie's latest is as powerful and challenging as his previous excellent books, and should only add readers to his ever-widening audience. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Alexie, author most recently of the short story collection The Toughest Indian in the World [BKL Ap 1 00], expresses an anger as large and molten as the earth's core; but like the earth, which conceals its heat beneath forests and oceans, he cloaks his with mordant humor and a rough-and-ready lyricism. In this bracing collection of poems and poem-tight prose pieces, he targets lies and hypocrisy. Alexie mocks the mealymouthed cant of the politically correct and, in a lashing poem titled "Open Books," the arrogance of a certain ilk of poet, then, elsewhere, tempers his rage with tenderness. His hard-hitting poems are loosely knit and suitable for performance, but his prose pieces are constructed as diabolically as barbed wire, especially the clever yet emotionally resonant essay "The Warriors," in which musings on baseball segue into thoughts on friendship and such frank disclosures as his confession that although television once had him convinced that white women were sexier than brown women, life taught him the truth about love. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


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.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Poetry = Anger x Imagination

Sherman Alexie has been busy since 1992, when his first book, a collection of poems titled The Business of Fancydancing, was published. During that time, he has written seven other books and developed one of them (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven) into a movie (Smoke Signals). The '90s were an impressive decade for Alexie, even more so when you realize he is only 33 years old and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. This year he has published two books, the short story collection The Toughest Indian in the World and a new poetry collection, One Stick Song. Spend a few minutes with any of his books, and you'll understand this admirable production rate. Alexie writes ferociously, as if he must write simply to stay alive ("I have to run fast&I cannot run fast enough," he says in one poem). Yet in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, each of Alexie's books seems to have all the immediacy of his first, even when he is writing about being a famous writer. One Stick Song is no exception.

Alexie's general tone is one of casual lyricism; he is fond of the bathetic moment when the sacred takes a nose dive into the profane, when literary sophistication veers into reservation grit, and vice versa. Many of the poems deal with rage and frustration about the perception and treatment (though more about the perception) of American Indians in the United States. The poems are earnest; there is very little irony in Alexie's voice. There is, however, a great deal of irony scattered throughout the poems -- a reservation baseball team ("America's Favorite Pastime") called the Warriors, for starters -- but it is not employed as a literary effect. Rather, Alexie has a keen sense for all the ironies that make up modern Indian life, and he portrays them honestly, with a straight face. "You have to understand that white people invented irony," he writes in "The American Artificial Limb Company," a poem about a sister who died in a house fire in Seattle (I would say his sister, since her identifies her as such, but Alexie comes down hard on those readers who put literature to use as autobiography). Wracked with grief that "attaches itself to my legs with bolts and screws," Alexie says he once told a white woman that she looked like his sister, but he lied. The riff continues:

      I also lied when I said
      I only told one pretty white woman she looked
      Exactly like my sister. I must have said that
      To a dozen, to dozens. And, in truth yet again, I must
      Admit that none of the pretty white women
      Looked anything like my sister. I just wanted them

      to rescue me. I was lonesome.

You see how Alexie can command the ironic moment in the midst of the sincere one? The idea of him telling all these "pretty white women" that they look like his sister is quite hilarious, since it's almost a parody of a pick-up line that even when delivered intraracially is a bit questionable (would you want to pick up a girl that looks exactly like your sister?). When delivered to these white women by Alexie, a dark-haired Spokane Indian, it is truly funny. One wonders if any of them bit. But although this element of humor is present in the scene, Alexie keeps it unclear how much of his tongue is in his cheek, or in fact, if there's any in there at all. The way he winds the strand back to the desolation of having lost a sister suddenly transforms the hapless, hilarious come-ons into something far more sad, serious, and alarming.

The centerpiece of the slim, 22-poem volume is "The Unauthorized Biography of Me," a 13-page prose romp that plays wonderfully with form -- there are lists and equations -- and ends up presenting what is a rather satisfying biography, in a way. Some of the book's best fun is offered in this poem, as when Alexie presents in mock-scientific solemnity his "discoveries" gleaned in looking at all the books by and about Indians:

Books about the Sioux sell more copies than all of the books written about other tribes combined.
If a book about Indians contains no dogs, then it was written by a non-Indian or mixed-blood writer.
If you are a non-Indian writing about Indians, it is almost guaranteed that something positive will be written about you by Tony Hillerman.
Most non-Indians who write about Indians are fiction writers. Fiction about Indians sells.

There are many more of these conclusions, each one providing that same edge of humor and distress, irony and sincerity.

The poem ends with a funny scene at a reading Alexie is giving in Spokane, Washington. He reads a story about an Indian father who abandons his family. At the end of the story, he notices a woman bawling in the front row.

"What's wrong?" I ask her.

"I'm so sorry about your father," she says.

"Thank you," I say, "But that's my father sitting right next to you."

The poem, like many others in this collection, manages to capture the frustration, the irony, the sadness, and the occasional humor of feeling constantly misunderstood, both as a person and as a people. But Alexie's abiding love and fascination for the world never allows his poetry to descend into pure, unapproachable rage. He is always on the lookout for what turns a moment of humiliation, or inequity, into a moment of poetry. As he writes in "Unauthorized Biography," "Poetry = Anger x Imagination." And in One Stick Song, Alexie raises that equation to the nth power.

—Jacob Silverstein

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 co-produced, enlarged his audience still further. Alexie's honors include awards from the NEA, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, the Washington State Arts Commission, and a citation as "One of the 20 Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40" from Granta magazine. As an enrolled Spokane / Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie lives in Seattle with his wife and son.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Whether slyly identifying irony as a white man's invention, or deftly moving from prose-like multilayered narratives to formal poetry and song structures, this fifth collection from poet (The Business of Fancydancing; etc.), novelist (Indian Killer; etc.) and screenwriter (Smoke Signals) Alexie demonstrates many of his skills. Most prominent perhaps is his ability to handle multiple perspectives and complex psychological subject matter with a humor that feeds readability: "Successful non-Indian writers are viewed as well-informed about Indian life. Successful mixed-blood writers are viewed as wonderful translators of Indian life. Successful Indian writers are viewed as traditional storytellers of Indian life." Poems such as the title one, a haunting chant for lost family, and "The Theology of Cockroaches," do some vivid scene setting: "...never/ woke to a wall filled with cockroaches/ spelling out my name, never/ stepped into a dark room and heard/ the cockroaches baying at the moon." At times Alexie allows his language, within the lineated poems almost exclusively, to slacken into clich . The opening, multipart prose piece "The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me" is arguably the strongest in the book, juxtaposing roughly chronological anecdotes with "An Incomplete List of People I Wish Were Indian" and the formula "Poetry = anger x imagination." Other poems tell of "Migration, 1902" and "Sex in Motel Rooms"; describe "How it Happens" and "Second Grief"; and develop "The Anatomy of Mushrooms." Alexie's latest is as powerful and challenging as his previous excellent books, and should only add readers to his ever-widening audience. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

KLIATT

In this latest collection of poems, Alexie explores old and new territory, beginning with a prose piece, "The Unauthorized Biography of Me," a searing portrait of his coming of age as an Indian in Spokane, Washington. Within this one piece, Alexie speaks of the prejudice he encountered, the resultant solidarity (although laced with conflict) with his peers, and his discomfort being a scholar, not an athlete, a role greatly prized in the Indian community. Other pieces comment on the hubris and deceit of poets, the grief at the loss of family through alcoholism, and the anger at being a reservation kid. This last, called "The Mice War," tells of his experience killing mice who had scattered after he and a friend dumped garbage from cans: "...the reservation/ had taught me to hate/ so it was easy to hate the mice." The title piece, "One Stick Song," is a kind of chant/prayer for the dead, using the power of repetition to invoke their spirits: "O, crimson/ o, brown/ o, uncle, kind uncle/ I sing you back, I sing you back." Included is a longer prose piece about Alexie's experience on a Little League team, humiliating for him as both a batter and fielder yet important to his bonding with his peers. There's universal appeal here for younger readers. Also, within this piece, are his memories of girls on the team, his vague recollection of their names/identities, leading to questions on his own initial preference for white women although he eventually married an Indian. Alexie's style and content vary, yet there is this constant theme of searching for an identity in a world where Indians often feel invisible. He is deft in mixing the traditional Indian motifs of chant/repetition/pareddown language with styles diffused from mentors to create a direct yet lyrical voice. There are some explicit scenes described here which may make the collection more appropriate for older high school students. This collection and others by Alexie would be valuable additions to American Indian literature units or a unit on up and coming writers. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Hanging Loose Press, 91p, 23cm, 99-058811, $15.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Sue E. Budin; YA Libn., Ann Arbor P.L., Ann Arbor, MI, November 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 6)

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."