There is something to Phillip Lopate that may make his followers feel particularly close to him, as if his work were known solely by them and a select few others; that this is not true, that he is in fact an immensely respected writer and scholar, would seem of little importance to these readers.
One of the most important Native American writers of the post-1968 generation, James Welch, to a large degree, established a genre. What he gave us was Native American Literature: literature unmistakably about Indian subjects, written by an Indian writer. His characters were never drawn from sensa
'Coming Close' begins with a somber description of a worker who has been toiling with a polishing wheel for the previous three hours. As the poem hones in on the scene, the question arises: 'Is this really a woman?' Suddenly you are in the poem, probing the buff, mechanical body of this worker and ma