Book Description

"We are given this world and some time with friends. How time dawned on mind and was beaded into language amazes me the way an orb-spider's web or a computerchip does. . ". Carter Revard, Osage Indian poet, Rhodes scholar, and professor of medieval English literature, shares both this amazement and his amazing command of language in this first retrospective collection of forty published and unpublished pieces written from 1970 to 1991. As much at home reading Old English manuscripts at the British Museum as he is taking part in Osage ceremonials, Revard possesses an exact knowledge of European poetic forms along with an equally impressive knowledge of Native American traditional narrative. When combined, these seemingly disparate genres produce literary tensions that Revard handles with skill and grace. Revard's poems may be set in Oklahoma, across America, or in Europe; they may even straddle the map, as in "Homework at Oxford", where a late-night contemplation of Breughel's "Adoration of the Magi" triggers images of home and conveys a sense of global connectedness. His poems concern a wide range of themes and reflect a unique blending of poetic and cultural traditions, rendered in voices ranging from quiet reflection to hot invective. "I am grateful that water and language, time and space, memory and writing have been given us", says Revard, "and I've set their star-stuff into the best poems I could for you who hold this book". Those who have long admired his talents will be grateful for it, while those reading him for the first time will rejoice in the discovery.