Displaying 1 of 1 2000 Format: Book Author: Smith, William Jay, 1918-2015. Title: The Cherokee lottery : a sequence of poems / by William Jay Smith. Publisher, Date: Willimantic, Connecticut : Curbstone Press, [2000] ©2000 Description: 97 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm illustration Subjects: Cherokee people -- History -- 19th century -- Poetry. Cherokee people -- Relocation -- Poetry. Trail of Tears, 1838-1839 -- Poetry. Cherokee people -- Poetry. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. 031696 ; *007797 LCCN: 00026236 ISBN: 1880684667 (pbk.) 9781880684665 (pbk.) System Availability: 2 # System items in: 2 # Local items: 2 # Local items in: 2 Current Holds: 0 Place Request Add to My List Expand All | Collapse All Availability Large Cover Image Trade Reviews Library Journal ReviewArranged in six sections, Vega!s 12th book of poems provides an in-depth tour of her poetic oeuvre. Each section echoes Vega!s recurrent themes: nature, death, prisoners, family history, and travels in Ireland and in South America. This collection, like many of the individual poems in it, could have used some editorial winnowing. Though Vega often shows a deftness of touch and a keen ear for language, the shorter poems are more powerful: dear butter/ your blues/ your mouth harp sweet/ chicago/ winter nights. In poem after poem, Vega shows herself to be an adept poet of place"as in the title poem, which describes a cafe in Les Halles: after a night we could find the strong/ men from the market/ and the beautiful prostitutes/ resting in each other!s arms/ Le Chat Qui PIche, Le Chien Qui Fume/ alive with Parisian waltzes, his hands on her ass. Unfortunately, when Vega tackles political issues, polemics dominate: Dear Nuclear Commission: Don!t you have children?/ Or grandchildren? What about them? But when she writes from the heart"as in To You on the Other Side of This, a love poem to a murdered son as well as a battle cry of anger directed at his killer"we are immediately drawn in. Recommended for larger poetry collections and all academic ones."Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Booklist ReviewSmith's sequence of moving, extraordinarily visual poems brings us to the heart of one of the nation's greatest tragedies and, many say, sins--the "removal" of the five civilized tribes, via the Trail of Tears, from their homelands in the eastern U.S. to the Oklahoma territory. Part Choctaw himself, Smith uses several different voices in the sequence, such as those of an old Choctaw on the trail, remembering the "buzzard man" who presided over funeral rites, while mourning the many who died without such appropriate ritual; the great Choctaw chief, Pushmataha, who traveled to Washington in a failed attempt to gain a hearing for his people; and artist Charles Banks Wilson, sketching the last of the purebloods in the melting pot of Oklahoma. Many of the poems appear in the book's signature stanza, a lopey, three-line, roughly pentametric form that sounds sometimes reportorial, sometimes Shakespearean, sometimes both at once. Moving, humane, unforgettable. --Patricia Monaghan Summary For the first time in poetic form, The Cherokee Lottery treats one of the greatest tragedies in American history, the forced removal of the Southern Indian tribes east of the Mississippi. When gold was discovered on Cherokee land in northern Georgia in 1828, the U.S. Government passed the Removal Act, and 18,000 Cherokees, along with other southern tribes--Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks--were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma territory. Herded along under armed guard, they traveled in bitter cold weather and as many as a quarter died on what became known as "The Trail of Tears." In powerful poetry of epic proportions, which Harold Bloom has called his best work, Smith paints a stark and vivid picture of this ordeal and its principal participants, among them Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, and Osceola, the Seminole chief. Table of Contents Journey to the InteriorThe Eagle Warrior: An InvocationThe Cherokee LotteryThe TrailThe Talking Leaves: Sequoyah's AlphabetOld Cherokee Woman's SongThe CrossingThe Pumpkin FieldThe Buzzard ManChristmas in Washington with the Choctaw ChiefAt the Theater: The Death of OsceolaThe PlayersThe Choctaw Stick-Ball GameSong of the DispossedThe Buffalo HunterSitting Bull in SerbiaThe Burning of MalmaisonThe Artist and His Pencil: A Search for the PurebloodsFull Circle: The Connecticut CasinoAcknowledgments and NotesPicture Credits Librarian's View Syndetics Unbound Displaying 1 of 1
