The Southern Cross by Charles Wright (review)

268 Western American Literature versity of Nebraska Press, 1981) came out only a little before their own work; and the two volumes complement each other very nicely. The book is arranged in three parts, Part I, A Bibliography of Native American Writers, Part II, A Bibliography of Native American Writers Known Only by Pen Names, and Part III, Biographical Notes: these are followed by an Index of Writers by Tribal Affiliation, and a Subject Index. (It is interesting to note that other than under the listing for Indian, and Indians, American, the greatest number of entries are found under the head­ ings Cherokee Nation, and under Education.) Users of the book will be particularly grateful for the third part; although some further information about the lives of the authors cited may occasionally be desired, Littlefield and Parins have made the way to it a good deal easier. Perhaps it would have been more helpful still if they had appended to each of their biographi­ cal notes the sources for their information. These are given generally in the Preface, but one might occasionally wish to know the particular sources for a particular entry (this might have been done with a list of abbreviations). Littlefield and Parins have also attempted to aid students of Indian writing by providing a generic classification (A = Address, C = Collections and Compilations, D = Drama, etc.) for each of their entries. This is a pro­ cedure potentially fraught with difficulty, inasmuch as the question of genre has been made problematical by recent critical theory. But the compilers are modest and entirely sensible: I have not been able to find an instance worth quarreling about. The Biobibliography is a fine piece of work, and it is exactly for that reason that I must register one complaint. This book is physically unattrac­ tive, a most un-book-ish book: the pages look like typescript with titles underlined rather than italicized and with ragged right hand margin; the (computer?) type is small and ugly. Littlefield and Parins have produced something valuable; it is too bad Scarecrow Press could not make it some­ what better looking. ARNOLD KRUPAT, Sarah Lawrence College The Southern Cross. By Charles Wright. (New York: Random House, 1981. 65 pages, $10.50.) When the seer was asked by Liriope if her son Narcissus was destined to achieve maturity. Teiresias replied, “Yes, if he never knows himself.” Since contemporary poetry is often an unrelenting quest for the poet’s own selfness, too often immature ego or gland clamor rather than search for position within objective reality, it is rewarding to find in his quest such multiplicity of spiritual discoveries as are shared by Charles Wright in this volume. He circumnavigates his complex world, guided by a southern cross “hanging like a kite in the sky.” Reviews 269 The opening poem, “Homage to Cezanne,” evokes the fearful, wonder­ ful image of our historical past in a richly human and earthy counterpart to the stupendous Rose of Dante’s Paradiso, with its myriad saved souls fly­ ing in and out like bees in the petals of a flower. Wright seems to say that, striving to live in reality, we try to make our impossible break with the past, yet continue to perform the lives of the dead, unable to let go, “hoarding the little mounds of sorrow laid up in our hearts.” Five of nine poems in section two of four parts are titled “Self Portrait.” Each poem asseverates the sensuous reality of physical time and place, over which the dead still preside, and the living join hands “that when the birds start none of us is missing. Hold hands, hold hands.” The twenty lyrics of Part Three contemplate the emptiness of death: “The souls of the day’s dead fly up like birds, big sister. The sky shutters and casts loose And faster than stars the body goes to the earth. ... I want to complete my flesh and sit in a quiet corner Untied from God, where the dead don’t sing in their sleep.” It is the long title poem which dominates, sharpens his Weltanschauung. Sixteen pages of brilliant, poignant lines defining the world of a modem intellectual in...