Raven (eBook)

poems

John Smelcer (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019
Leapfrog Press (Verlag)
978-1-948585-10-1 (ISBN)

Infos

The American cousin to Hughes’ Crow flaps, caws and spraddles onto the pages in this poetry collection. Crow, meet Raven.

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In the mythologies of cultures worldwide, Raven, or his smaller cousin, Crow, is often portrayed as an ever-selfish, ever-hungry trickster and destroyer. In this collection, John Smelcer has crafted Raven as all these things, but also as an Instigator who was present at key moments of human history when things went awry. This is the collection that Hughes considered to be the American cousin to his Crow.

Autor

John Smelcer is a member of the Traditional Native Village of Tazlina and a shareholder of Ahtna Native Corporation. For three years, he was the executive director of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation, charged with preserving Ahtna culture, history, and language. Taught by every living elder in his tribe, John is one of the last speakers of his severely endangered language and the only tribal member able to read and write fluently in it. In 1998, he published The Ahtna Noun Dictionary and Pronunciation Guide. He is also one among the last speakers of Alutiiq, a neighboring, yet unrelated language. In 2010, he edited and published a noun dictionary of that endangered language. In 1998, John was nominated for the Alaska Governor’s Award for his contributions to the preservation of Alaska Native languages and cultures. In 1999, Ahtna Traditional Chief Harry Johns held a special ceremony to designate John as a Traditional Ahtna Culture Bearer, a term usually reserved for elders with significant cultural knowledge. John Smelcer is the author of over fifty books, including Beautiful Words: The Complete Ahtna Poems, the only existing literature published in the Ahtna language. His novels include The Trap, The Great Death, Edge of Nowhere, Lone Wolves, Savage Mountain, Stealing Indians and Kiska. In 1995, John co-edited Durable Breath: Contemporary Native American Poetry. In 2013, with Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki), John co-edited Native American Classics, a graphic novel of 19th and early 20th century Native American literature. For almost a quarter century, John Smelcer served as poetry editor at Rosebud.

Inhalt

“Crow, Raven, and the Hughes-Plath Family Tree”
The Unlikely History of the Art of Raven

Mythopoetica

The Birth of Raven1
Ravencolor2
Raven’s Song of Himself3
A Lingering Doubt4
The Day after Saturday
Creation Myth5
Raven and the First People6
Raven’s Theology7
When God Tried to Teach8
Raven to Speak
When God Tried to Teach9
Raven Mathematics
When God Tried to Teach10
RavenCompassion
Raven Remembers11
What Raven Had for Breakfast12
The Temptation of Eve13
The Mark of Cain14
God Apologizes for the Flood
Exodus Raven
The Other Temptation of Christ15
Passover, 33 A. D.16
Golgotha
The Substitute17
Beowraven18
Raven Fly Trap19
Raven’s Vision20
Raven Sends Out a Search Party21
Raven’s Hit List22
Raven Remodels the World23
Extinction Theory24
Raven and Killer Whale25
The Dog Husband26
When Raven Tried Benevolence27
Raven, the Problem-Solver28
The Corpse King30
Raven’s Mask31
The Blue Prince32
The Birth of Iago
Instigator
Frankenraven
Stool Pigeon33
To Build a Fire34
Raven & Vinny
Raven’s Titanic Fun
Raven Cum Laude35
Heil Raven37
Role Model
Civil Disobedience
Electric Raven
New York City, 196938
Raven’s Doppelganger40
A Tibetan Myth42
Raven’s Shell Game
Freud Discovers the God Complex
Raven Goes on a Game Show
Gender Bender
Raven Pulls his Trump Card
Raven Writes the Epitaph for Humanity
The Law of Entropy43

In the Language Raven Gave Us

Zen Raven45
The Meaning of Life46
Prayer Singer48
A Minor Correction49
Hunter’s Luck50
When Raven Was Killed52
Hide & Seek with Raven54
Raven & Butterfly55



Corax Corax

After a Sermon at the Church57
Paradise Lost58
Unemployment Line59
Raven Takes a Career60
American Indian Self-Police61
Returning the Gift62
The Meal
Kinship64
Witness65
Ravens at Auschwitz
Raven Oracle
A Raven Funeral66
The Great Religious Trial68
Raven Addresses the Jury
A Modern Day Indian Fairy Tale69
Roadkill
The Myth-Makers Imbibe70

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.7.2019
• Zusatzinfo: 10 B&W illustrations by Leonard Baskin, Larry Vienneau & Don DeMauro
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik
• ISBN-10: 1-948585-10-3 / 1948585103
• ISBN-13: 978-1-948585-10-1 / 9781948585101