Death. Family. Loss. Love. Wealth. Poetry. Spirituality. Genocide. Prejudice. Sherman Alexies new poetry collection, What Ive Stolen, What Ive Earned, demonstrates the National Book Award-winning writers ability to tackle big themes, weaving them together in the context of his Indian identity and with his wry, unapologetic sense ofhumor.

And he wastes no time doing it. Alexie takes on all these topics in the collections first poem, the wide-ranging and powerful Crazy Horse Boulevard, always through the lens of his Indian identity (a member of the Spokane Tribe, he uses the term Indian almost exclusively

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What Ive Stolen, What Ive Earned by Sherman Alexie poetry, (Hanging LoosePress)

Death. Family. Loss. Love. Wealth. Poetry. Spirituality. Genocide. Prejudice. Sherman Alexies new poetry collection, What Ive Stolen, What Ive Earned, demonstrates the National Book Award-winning writers ability to tackle big themes, weaving them together in the context of his Indian identity and with his wry, unapologetic sense ofhumor.

And he wastes no time doing it. Alexie takes on all these topics in the collections first poem, the wide-ranging and powerful Crazy Horse Boulevard, always through the lens of his Indian identity (a member of the Spokane Tribe, he uses the term Indian almost exclusively). He addresses being Indian in a white world (Most of the people who read this poem will be white people), as well as within Indian culture, on and off the reservation (Among my immediate family, Im the only one who doesnt live on the reservation. What does that say about me?). The poem brings historical prejudices into a modern context, and Alexie calls things as he sees them, especially when it comes to the choices people make from what he sees as places of luxury (If my sons, Indian as they are, contract some preventable disease from those organic, free-range white children and die, will it be legal for me to scalp and slaughter their whiteparents?).

The focus on racial and cultural identity comes through strongest in the books first section. Happy Holidays pointedly discusses the complicated relationship modern Indians have with American holidays. Sonnet, with Slot Machines wrestles with the politics of Indian casinos and issues ofgambling.

Slot Machines is one of many so-called sonnets in the book; the poems comprise the second section and are scattered throughout the others. In labeling these poems sonnets, Alexie initiates a conversation about form, forgoing the traditional 14-line rhyme and metrical structure and instead following formulas of his own. This reinvention of form allows Alexie to stay true to his own voice, never sacrificing his natural vocabulary for the sake of someone elses definition of poetic. Yet Alexie pays homage to formal poetry and to his literary forbears by recognizing the significance of the forms constraints while giving it his ownspin.

Whatever form he uses, Alexie stays true, too, to his own style of storytelling. And What Ive Stolen, What Ive Earned is, at its core, a book of stories, told piecemeal, which hit the reader with their poignancy in the way Alexie weaves the seemingly disparate pieces together. In Sonnet, with Tainted Love he does this with a missing persons case, nightmares and the movie Dirty Dancing. Hell links Dante, Jimmy Durante, Moses and a fear ofheights.

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Poetry works show Alexie at his best - Sun, 12 Jan 2014 PST