Visit Teepee Town: Native Writings After the Detours

Coffee House Press invites readers into the world of Native American postmodern poetry in a groundbreaking anthology sampling the work of twenty-two authors who lead us into new conceptual terrain. Visit Teepee Town is the first anthology dedicated solely to postmodern North American Native poetry and poetics. The works selected here resist established methodologies of defining indigenous aesthetics, and include bilingual texts, reinterpretations of traditional tales, and critiques of the Western tradition in anthropology and the social sciences.

The collection features both new and established authors, including James Thomas Stevens, Lise McCloud, Gerald Vizenor, James Luna, Rosemarie Waldrop, Carolyn Lei-lanilau, Barbara Tedlock, Linda Hogan, Wendy Rose, Maurice Kenny, Hachavi Edgar Heap of Birds, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Victoria Lena Manyarrows, Besmilr Brigham, Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, Diane Glancy, Phil Young, Larry Evers and Felipe Molina, Juan Felipe Herrera, Greg Sarris, Peter Blue Cloud, and Louise Bernice Halfe.

Certain to spark lively debate in the classroom and beyond, Visit Teepee Town sidesteps the roadblocks and knocks down the barricades that have limited contemporary criticism and poetry. A revival of the magic of sound and oral tradition, Visit Teepee Town redefines contemporary and postmodern poetry and poetics as it leads readers to the Teepee Town at the end of the mind.

The first Native American postmodern poetry anthology. A revival of the magic of sound.

Publishers Weekly

You think of us only/ when your voice/ wants for roots,/ when you have sat back/ on your heels/ and become primitive," declares Wendy Rose in "For the White Poets Who Would Be Indian," and her sardonic attitude sums up the collective tone of this uncompromising anthology. Though there have been numerous collections of Native American poetry, poets Glancy (Flutie; The Cold-and-Hunger Dance), and Nowak, editor of the journal Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, and a professor at The College of St. Catherine's in Minnesota, have assembled work that goes far beyond a dreary poetics of indignation. The best of these move toward the reappropriation of Indian (including Hawai'ian) languages and modes, as in "Tokinish" by James Thomas Stevens/ Aronhictas: "Call this imprint: Qunnama gsuck--the first that come in the Spring into the fresh Rivers." Provocative essays on poetics by Greg Sarris and Gerald Vizenor are engaging and accessible, and will work well on cultural studies reading lists. The inclusion of popular writers such as Sherman Alexie and Linda Hogan will help expose an existing audience to some startling new voices, such as those of Allison Adele Hedge Coke and Lisa McCloud: "On my initial do-it-yourself adolescent vision quest I heard the elm trees talking. `Aneeb. Aneeb. Aneeb.' They never said a thing to me in English." ("Mixed American Pak") These are Indians with attitude, and this collection has the potential to foster a radical reimagining of Native poetries. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

A poet and labor activist heralded by Adrienne Rich for "regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature," Mark Nowak regularly leads transnational poetry workshops between American and international trade unions. The author of Revenants and Shut Up Shut Down, he has also been a contributor to the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog.