Search for a word or phrase in this book …

Biographical note:  Carter Revard, Osage on his father’s side, grew up on the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma. After work as farm hand and greyhound trainer, he took B.A.s from the University of Tulsa and Oxford (Rhodes Scholarship, Oklahoma and Merton 1952), was given his Osage name and a Yale Ph.D., then taught medieval and American Indian literatures before retiring in 1997. He has published Ponca War Dancers; Cowboys and Indians, Christmas Shopping; An Eagle Nation; Family Matters, Tribal Affairs; and Winning the Dust Bowl.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844710645
ISBN:  1844710645
Author:  Carter Revard
Title:  How the Songs Come Down
Series:  Earthworks
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Apr-05
Extent:  176pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  10 mm
Weight:  264 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Small Press Distribution
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 10.99
Price:  USD 16.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Revard’s poems are more like those of Seamus Heaney than those of Paul Muldoon – more like Robert Frost than Wallace Stevens, more like Mark Twain than Henry James. They are true stories, some from time on the Osage Reservation during Dust Bowl days, some from the Isle of Skye in Hippie Time, others from Creation Time in Las Vegas with Trickster, at the Hotel Empire in Manhattan with Dante, under dragons flying over St. Louis, dodging bullets while stealing watermelons, listening to humpbacked whales and wine-throated hummingbirds in Bellagio, parading with the Veterans of Foreign Wars to publicize some powwow in the old Indian-fighter headquarters at Jefferson Barracks on the Mississippi, sitting with Ponca cousins in a bar and hoping not to get shot after the occupation of Wounded Knee. The reason for every poem in this marvellous selection is to invite readers into its personal, familial, communal space to feast with the Ponca people and Revard on whatever they have on the table. These poems are all for having some kind of good time together, and the more the merrier.

Meet the author:

Podcasts

Play Birch Canoe (948 KB)


Play Chimes at Midnight (3.4 MB)


Play Coyote Tells Why He Sings (1.7 MB)


Play Dancing with Dinosaurs (5.1 MB)


Play Driving in Oklahoma (1.8 MB)


Play History into Words (3.8 MB)


Play Letter to Friends on the Isle of Skye (5.1 MB)


Play Looking Before and After (2.4 MB)


Play Parading with the Veterans of Foreign Wars (3.3 MB)


Play Songs of the Wine-throated Hummingbird (4.4 MB)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Table of contents: 
Indian Territory
Coyote Tells Why He Sings
Geode
Stone Age
Skins as Old Testament
Dancing with Dinosaurs
Driving in Oklahoma
What the Eagle Fan Says
Birch Canoe
In Chigger Heaven
Close Encounters
Wazhazhe Grandmother
Ponca War Dancers
Over by Fairfax, Leaving Tracks
Getting Across
Pure Country
Cowboys and Indians
Communing Before Supermarkets
An Eagle Nation
Dragon-watching in St Louis
That Lightning’s Hard to Climb
And Don’t Be Deaf to the Singing Beyond
Looking Before and After
Aunt Jewell as Powwow Princess
When Earth Brings
In the Suburbs
A Mandala of Sorts
In the Changing Light
Outside in St. Louis
What the Poet’s Cottage in Tucson Said
How the Songs Come Down
Making Money
Transactions
Earth and Diamonds
Amber and Lightning
Snowflakes, Waterdrops, Time, Eternity and So On
Unzipping Angels
Christmas Shopping
Given
Liquid Crystal Thoughts
Sea-changes, Easter 1990
Law and Order
Discovery of the New World
November in Washington, D.C.
History into Words
Another Sunday Morning
Parading with the Veterans of Foreign Wars
Coming of Age in the County Jail
Free White and Fifteen
Firewater
A Response to Terrorists
Hamlet and Fortinbras Exchange Pleasantries
The Biograbbers
Support your Local Police Dog
Criminals as Creators of Capital
Chimes at Midnight
The Secret Verbs
On the Planet of Blue-eyed Cats
A Song That We Still Sing
Starring America
1. To The Eastern Shores of Light
2. New York, With Reservations
3. On The Reservation
Over There
Advice from Euterpe
Jetliner from Angel City
Where the Muses Haunt
The Swan’s Song
Pilotless Angel: Christmas, 2004
Letter to Friends on the Isle of Skye
Postcolonial Hyperbaggage
Columbus Looks Out Far, In Deep
But Still in Israel’s Paths They Shine
Songs of the Wine-throated Hummingbird

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample (80 KB)

Excerpt from book:  

Skins as Old Testament

Wonder who first slid in
to use another creature’s skin
for staying warm – blood–smeared
heresy almost, Hunter becoming
Deer, Shepherd the Lamb as in flamelit
Dordogne caves or dim cathedrals –
crawling inside the deer’s
still–vivid presence there
to take their lives from what had moved
within, to eat delicious life
then spread its likeness over a sleeping
and breathing self, musk–wrapped
inside the wind,
the rain,
the sleet –
to roll up in a seal–skin self beneath
a mammoth heaven
on which the sleet would rap and tap,
to feel both feet
grow warm even on ice
or in the snow – hand–chalicing
new tallow flame as spirit
of passing life
and every time a tingling
revelation when the life
came back into a freezing hand or foot
after the fur embraced its flesh, still deeper
when human bodies coupling in
a bear’s dark fur
found winter’s warmth and then
its child
within the woman
came alive.

Unpublished endorsement :  Among contemporary American poets, Carter Revard is a giant, a rare and unique writer profoundly at home in Osage tribal history and culture, in traditional English poetry, and in the urban landscape of his own country. How the Songs Come Down seems an essential book for any poetry shelf, a richly regaling trove of astonishing lyric insights and unforgettable stories.

X.J. Kennedy

Unpublished endorsement :  I haven’t read all of How the Songs Come Down yet but I can say right now that what I’ve read is like talking and listening to Carter Revard face to face. Smiling big and nodding and laughing at the funny stuff, and frowning, too, at the hard parts. It’s fine, fine poetry, of course, but they’re stories too, you know, because we share them, and we learn from them for they sustain us and our land, culture, and community.

Simon J. Ortiz

Unpublished endorsement :  How the Songs Come Down is a rich offering from a rich and fertile mind. Carter Revard demonstrates again that he is among the truly gifted poets writing today. The scope and variety of this work are exceptional, and the spirit of the whole is uniquely native and American. Here is something to place among the keepsakes of our literary heritage.

Scott Momaday