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Flood Song
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Flood Song Paperback - 2009

by Sherwin Bitsui

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Native traditions scrape against contemporary urban life in "Flood Song." Poet Bitsui is at the forefront of a new generation of Native writers who resist being identified solely by race, yet this work is filled with allusions to Dine (Navajo) myths, customs, and traditions.

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From the publisher

"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.

Details

  • Title Flood Song
  • Author Sherwin Bitsui
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 120
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Copper Canyon Press
  • Publication date 2009-10-01
  • ISBN 9781556593086 / 1556593082
  • Weight 0.4 lbs (0.18 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.3 x 6.9 x 0.4 in (23.62 x 17.53 x 1.02 cm)
  • Category Poetry
  • Library of Congress subjects Navajo Indians
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2009024433
  • Dewey Decimal Code 811.6

Media reviews

Citations

  • Library Journal, 11/15/2009, Page 68
  • Publishers Weekly, 11/16/2009, Page 40

About the author

Sherwin Bitsui was born in 1975 in Fort Defiance, Arizona. He is Din (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.

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