Review
“I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that Ray Young Bear is the best poet in Indian Country and in the top 46 in the whole dang world. Sacred and profane, profound and irreverent, his poetry pushes you into a corner, roughs you up a bit, maybe takes your wallet, and then gives you a long kiss goodbye.” —Sherman Alexie
“Ray Young Bear’s work is the gift of an anguished imagination marked with grief and wild humor. His writing alternately lashes and heals, but ultimately instructs from a deep vision of the world.” —Louise Erdrich
“These are remarkable poems. I read them over and over again, and I become more and more convinced that they proceed from a native intelligence that is at once ancient and contemporary, straightforward and ironic, provocative and insightful. The poet speaks from a kind of timeless experience; his voice is the voice of the coyote or singer of Beowulf or the inventor of words. The Invisible Musician is a work extraordinarily rich and rewarding.” —N. Scott Momaday
“It was clear from Ray Young Bear’s earliest poems that he was a poet of great ability. He has gotten better. The physical detail is ground, and there are mysterious interminglings of water and air that hold the worlds together. The Invisible Musician is rightly titled and a fine book.” —Robert Bly
“[Ray Young Bear is] a national treasure.” —Robert F. Gish
“Ray Young Bear is magic. He writes as if he lived 10,000 years ago in a tribe whose dialect happens to be modern English.” —Richard Hugo
“No one, absolutely no one, tells the tribal story like Young Bear.” —Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
From the Inside Flap
A classic of Native American literature, Black Eagle Child uses a rich mix of verse, prose narrative, and letters to tell Edgar Bearchild's journey to adulthood. Although the backdrop of much of Young Bear's novel may be familiar-the conflicts over race, drugs, Vietnam and others that gripped America in the fifties, sixties, and seventies--Bearchild's recounts his coming-of-age story from a distinct vantage point, as a member of the Mesquakie nation. From his childhood delight in Jell-O to his induction into the faith of his elders, Bearchild's journey is a uniquely American one. Seamlessly mixing tribal memory and the comic events of Bearchild's life, Young Bear's story excels in its presentation of startling, absurdist juxtapositions of the ancient and modern, expresses bemusement and anger at the strange ways of whites, and tells of the strength and vision that come from his Native tradition.
"The American Indian poet and novelist Ray A. Young Bear possesses a robust imagination and a wonderfully droll narrative voice."--The New York Times
"This book is a story with great liveliness. It reminds me of Huckleberry Finn but with real huckleberries this time. The complicated mysteries and zaniness of the Native American soul rise up in the story, and the 'other world' crosses this world in a way that is deeply satisfying."--Robert Bly
"Ray A. Young Bear's work is the gift of an anguished imagination marked with grief and humor. His writing alternately lashes and heals, but always instructs from a deep vision of the world."--Louise Erdrich
"Ray A. Young Bear is generally acknowledged as the nation's foremost contemporary poet.... Young Bear is destined for even wider and more fulsome recognition as a national treasure."--Robert Gish, The Bloomsbury Review
"[Young Bear] speaks from a kind of timeless experience, his voice is the voice of the coyote or singer of Beowulf or the inventor of words."--N. Scott Momaday
Ray A. Young Bear is a writer, musician, and poet who lives in the Mesquakie Settlement in Central Iowa. He has taught at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and Eastern Washington University. His published works include two volumes of poetry, Winter of the Salamander and The Invisible Musician, and the novel Remnants of the First Earth.
From the Back Cover
Destined to become a classic of Native American literature, Black Eagle Child uses a rich mix of verse, prose narrative, and letters to tell Edgar Bearchild's journey to adulthood, from his childhood delight in Jell-O to his induction into the faith of his elders. Seamlessly mixing tribal memory and the comic events of Bearchild's life, Young Bear's story excels at startling, absurdist juxtapositions of the ancient and modern, expresses bemusement and anger at the strange ways of whites, and tells of the strength and vision that come from his Native tradition.
