Unkissed, by Sherman Alexie

[coraa]

I was going to post this on Friday, per Friday Poetry Blogging (which I have been terribly remiss about), but I forgot, and now it's Sunday. Oh, well. It seems an appropriate Sunday poem, too.

I love Sherman Alexie. I read a number of his books in college, mostly poetry, some fiction (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is fantastic), and saw Smoke Signals, for which he wrote the screenplay and which is based on The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. And of course last year I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alexie is brilliant: sharp and lucid and a brilliant user of words, and also very, very funny, even when dealing with topics of great anger or sorrow. He writes about a lot of things, but principally about living as a modern Native American in the Northwest.

Then I moved to Seattle, and Pava introduced me to The Stranger, where I found Alexie's (then-running) column "Sonics Deathwatch," covering the Seattle vs. Clayton Bennett Sonics trial. Which was fascinating to me, because I'd been working under the college English-class inspired sense that this was a Serious Author, and in fact he is a Serious Author, but he's also a Serious Basketball Fan, and wrote very funny, sad, insightful articles about Seattle losing its pro basketball team.

Anyway. This week, The Stranger (who is not known for poetry publishing!) printed an Alexie poem, and, well, just go read it. It's good.

Unkissed
A Fibonacci Sequence Poem

And then go find The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and maybe watch Smoke Signals with me.

Comments

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Quite welcome!