Greasybear Songs by Charley John Greasybear (review)

Reviews 341 Symbolism pervades Fleck’s poetry, more so because of the poet’s concern with time, truth, and spirit. In poem after poem, the word “ancient” keeps recurring as an abstract motif. Fleck not only paints nature — not on a broad canvas — but recognizes in it a source for philosophical contempla­ tion. This reviewer likes all the poems in the collection. Cottonwood Moon is both of the American West and the world. The last to be considered in this review is Lawrence Spingarn’s The Dark Playground, a collection of seventy poems properly grouped in five sections, which, as the publishers affirm, characterizes “an age of weakening standards, creeping triviality, and dangerous values, deftly exposes falseness and pretension in all their guises.” Tightly constructed, lines of one stanza echoing those of another with firm interconnections, Spingarn’s The Dark Playground poems are honestly conceived and rooted in concrete perceptions. The poems are charged with grim humor and pathos. All the poems are modern in their tone, diction, and imagery. The social stance of the poet is revealed in the title itself. The poems ought to appeal to or disturb all the readers who are in one way or another faced with the dark and ugly realities of modem life. The first poem, “Area Code 312,” begins with “The static is awful. / Five million people are busy” and ties in a circular motion with the last three lines: “The static is awful. . . ./Five Million People ( I think) / Will crash my funeral.” Spingam is wholly engaged, perhaps pessimistically, in the bleak reality of the modem world that he cannot escape from. Using the traditional sonnet form, Spingarn in “Keep Moving” moves the reader grimly to dust. The sonnet is rich in imagery, associative imagery, connota­ tions, and atmosphere. This collection is a welcome contribution to the contemporary poetry of the American West. I admire the intensity of the poems. S. S. MOORTY (S. MURTHY SIKHA) Southern Utah State College Greasybear Songs. By Charley John Greasybear. Selected and edited by Judson Crews and A. Thomas Trusky. Introduction by J. Whitebird. (Boise: Ahsahta Press, 1979. 32 pages, $2.50.) J. Whitebird’s energetic introduction to Greasybear’s poems, most of which have appeared in periodicals like Prairie Schooner, that they are “the songs of the stars and the mountains, of the seasons and passions of the heart and soul, of the symbols of humanity and destiny,” raises high hopes. The reader may not, however, consistently realize the hopes. The songs/poems are uneven; they lack precise imagery, concreteness, and sometimes even 342 Western American Literature poetic diction. Juxtaposition of two poems, the first and the last, — “Woman Song” and “Song of Pure Finding^’ proves that the poet seems to move between poetry and prose, maybe between two worlds symbolically. The first stanza of the first poem and the last stanza of the last poem are reproduced: The bosom of my Grandmother Was soft, was soft though its milk was gone, was gone (“Woman Song”) This was not when I realized that I was lost, this was when I realized for the first time that I had found myself and I knew who I was and I knew who I would be wherever I was and whatever would happen after that (“Song of Pure Finding”) The unevenness of the collection does not in any way deter the reader from appreciating poems like “Jesus Song,” which is mythical and a search for identity of the speaker (surely the poet himself), “Love Song,” once again a poem that reveals the poet’s search and rude awakening to reality of loss, “Song of Water Crashing,” euphonic, simple, and unpretentious, “Song of Silences,” suggestive and reflective. “Song of Drawing Up Water,” clearly takes the reader to experience the speaker’s loss. “Some of the poems speak clearly of his bonds to his native community, bonds which most of us will never have the good fortune to experience,” as Whitebird says in his intro­ duction. Greasybear, a part-Navajo Indian, is caught between two worlds, two cultures. Though I believe “Song of Denial” and “Song of Bleeding” are explicit and perhaps vulgar, they do, however, contribute toward the thematic...