One Stick Song

by Sherman Alexie

Poetry. Native American Studies. "Whether slyly identifying irony as a white man's invention, or deftly moving from prose-like multilayered narratives to formal poetry and song structures, this fifth collection from poet, novelist, and screenwriter Alexie demonstrates many of his skills. Most prominent perhaps is his ability to handle multiple perspectives and complex psychological subject matter with a humor that feeds readability: 'Successful non-Indian writers are viewed as well-informed about Indian life. Successful mixed-blood writers are viewed as wonderful translators of Indian life. Successful Indian writers are viewed as traditional storytellers of Indian life.' Poems such as the title one, a haunting chant for lost family, and 'The Theology of Cockroaches, ' do some vivid scene setting: '...never/woke to a wall filled with cockroaches/spelling out my name, never/stepped into a dark room and heard/the cockroaches baying at the moon.' At times Alexie allows his language, within the lineated poems almost exclusively, to slacken into cliche. The opening, multipart prose piece 'The Unauthorized Biography of Me' is arguably the strongest in the book, juxtaposing roughly chronological anecdotes with 'An Incomplete List of People I Wish Were Indian' and the formula 'Poetry = anger x imagination.' Other poems tell of 'Migration, 1902' and 'Sex in Motel Rooms'; describe 'How It Happens' and 'Second Grief'; and develop 'The Anatomy of Mushrooms.' Alexie's latest is as powerful and challenging as his previous excellent books, and should only add readers to his ever-widening audience" Publishers Weekly."

Genres: Poetry, Native American, Fiction, Literature, Read For School, Indigenous

91 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Sherman Alexie is a Native American author, poet, and filmmaker known for his powerful portrayals of contemporary Indigenous life, often infused with wit, humor, and emotional depth. Drawing heavily on his experiences growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Alexie's work addresses complex themes such as identity, poverty, addiction, and the legacy of colonialism, all filtered through a distinctly Native perspective.
His breakout book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is a semi-autobiographical young adult novel that won the 2007 National Book Award and remains widely acclaimed for its candid and humorous depiction of adolescence and cultural dislocation. Earlier, Alexie gained critical attention with The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a collection of interconnected short stories that was adapted into the Sundance-winning film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he wrote the screenplay. He also authored the novels Reservation Blues, Indian Killer, and Flight, as well as numerous poetry collections including The Business of Fancydancing and Face.
Born with hydrocephalus, Alexie faced health and social challenges from an early age but demonstrated early academic talent and a deep love for reading. He left the reservation for high school and later studied at Washington State University, where a poetry course shifted his path toward literature. His mentor, poet Alex Kuo, introduced him to Native American writers, profoundly shaping his voice.
In 2018, Alexie faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment, which led to widespread fallout, including rescinded honors and changes in how his work is promoted in educational and literary institutions. He acknowledged causing harm but denied specific accusations. Despite the controversy, his influence on contemporary Native American literature remains significant.
Throughout his career, Alexie has received many awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award for War Dances and an American Book Award for Reservation Blues. He has also been a prominent advocate for Native youth and a founding member of Longhouse Media, promoting Indigenous storytelling through film.
Whether through poetry, prose, or film, Alexie’s work continues to challenge stereotypes and elevate Native American voices in American culture.

Reviews

[Karen Douglass · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often fail to record my reading of poetry because it's prodigious and would be hard to catalog here. But this book, a gift, is truly a gift. Alexie writes poignantly and with great courage about his Indian heritage. And no, he does not insist on Native American; he's Indian, so he insists. The book is a combination of contemporary free verse and prose. His issues/themes are family, identity, and love. Especially love, for his wife, his father, his son, his Indian world. No kitschy tribal stuff; this feels like the real inside story of a real man struggling to maintain both his Indian mindset and his place in contemporary America. This is a book I keep talking about. Whether you routinely read poetry or not, read this book.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's be honest. If you aren't "into" poetry in general, it can be extremely tedious.
Sherman Alexie's poetry is never tedious.

What is it? It is funny and painful and sexy and thought provoking.

His included essays are just the icing on the cake.

5 Stars

[Ronald Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable and teasingly provocative collection of Alexie’s poems and short essays which left me feeling like I’d just played an amusing game of intellectual peekaboo. I’d heard many radio interviews with the author around the time I read his novels The Toughest Indian in the World and Reservation Blues about ten years ago. That introductory enjoyment of his style and wit, and my familial and night-life exposure to a Native American/Native Alaskan flavor of human awareness, have left me almost certain that there exists some fundamental conceptual cultural difference that I can feel but not define.

In many of the pieces in this collection, that indefinable something would pop up briefly and make me smile at Alexie’s cleverness. This was most notable in the pieces describing the author’s experiences growing up on the reservation – I’d be reading along enjoying a juicy revelation from the secret world of unsupervised restless teenage boys when an Indian or reservation reference would re-flavor my experience of the story. Was Alexie teasing me with glimpses of that indefinable something or playfully challenging my stereotypes? It doesn’t matter – I was left with s feeling of expanded human awareness.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciate the honesty and originality and sexuality and tone of Alexie's poetry. He is irreverent, prodigious, and, did I say, truthful? I did. Yeah, he can be trusted.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems in this collection are enjoyable enough, but the two essays (The Unauthorized Biography of Me and The Warriors) pack the most punch. Biography flits about to different moments in Alexie's life, from picking forbidden apples from his grandmother's tree to a KISS concert as an adolescent to his list of people he wishes were Indian (which includes Harriet Tubman, Shakespeare, and Jesus Christ). The Warriors revolves around Alexie's experience playing on his reservation baseball team--his reasons for hating the sport, how he befriended the best player on the team, how he hated and lusted after the girls who played on the team, how he played Stratomatic baseball against his older brother. I will revisit these essays for structural inspiration as I try to craft some of my own memoirs.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh Sherman, why won't you write the forward for my book?
You write so damn good. . .

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I adore Alexie's The Summer of Black Widows, but although this is a slightly more recent collection, it didn't come close to the level of that collection. Here, one of my favorite moments was actually more of an essay than a poem, and on baseball of all things (which I say in surprise since I have zero interest in the sport), whereas the poems felt preoccupied by sex and relationships often presented in the crudest way possible, and repetition often felt like more of a crutch than a tool. I did love the final poetry sequence in the book--one more focused on family and legacy than on sex/sexual relationships or race, unlike many of the others, but it was a rare standout for me. I should emphasize that these themes don't bother me and I've often fallen in love with collections that put them front and center, but here the theme just didn't work for me, or perhaps just felt too crude, with many of the poems feeling less poetic than I expected from Alexie. Not a lot of language play, not a lot of gorgeous moments worth rereading, and not a lot of moments that made me stop and catch my breath as I reread a stanza, as happens with the best collections.

I've so loved his other poems, I still look forward to reading more, but I have to admit this collection was a bit of a disappointment.

[Mona Kareem · Rating 3 out of 5]

was enjoying this poetry collection by Sherman Alexie. I liked the poems on indian literature, indian writers, the poets are liars. Then he turns to sports and to childhood and his obsession and contrasts of indian women vs. white women, and it gets all sleazy and disturbing.
am all for men, for any and all creatures, to self-medicate with writing. but when your practice of objectification, self-hatred, misogyny, creepy lust are not doing anything for the rest of us, then maybe you need a shrink, not a poem.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection, the poet combines long, narrative, autobiographical pieces with poems about identity, sexuality, family, and reservation life into a potent admixture of images—some hypnotic, others hallucinogenic, a few humorous and dripping with off-white irony.


“My grades became the most accurate measure of my self-esteem.” (p. 45)

“I read books with a ferocity that turned the flipping of pages into a violent act.” (p. 45)


Favorite Poems:
“Crow Testament”
“Open Books”
“One Stick Song”
“Secondhand Grief”
“The Warriors”
“The Mice War”
“Sugar Town”

[A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This man, Sherman Alexie, sexually abuses women serially and I will never support his work.

Read the comments section: http://www.slj.com/2018/01/industry-n...

[Gordon Gravley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexie never ceases to impress me.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful collection

[Donna Hornik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry is a nice palette cleanser.

[Erin Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This did not take very long for me to read. It consists of 22... entries ...scattered across 79 pages. It might have taken longer to read if I felt inspired to pore over some of the entries a second time. I did read several poems in Alexie's Summer of Black Widows more than once, but not so here. This is because none of them called out for me to do so, to take a closer look. This is because reading this book felt like reading 22 quickly written notes in someone's personal journal. This is also because these entries--some prose, some possibly poems--continued to extend the same themes and topics found in The Summer of Black Widows.

There is metaphor in One Stick Song; there is imagination. But not as much as I found in Summer of Black Widows, and even more deeply tucked away in the belly of this book's 22 entries, hiding among unassuming lines and paragraphs. They leap like salmon from the whitewater of quotidian, personal reflection--and are gone again. Maybe one will leap from the next entry--for just a moment. Maybe not.

I am perhaps a little different than most readers of poetry. I do not read poems to be shocked by a few curse words and a couple moments of tastefully elusive erotica. I do not read poems to pick my way through words and phrases that repeat, repeat, repeat like water gushing over high rocks until my face is numb from the cold peck and nibble of little words, just hoping to find a couple of gems rolling amid the torrent. I read to be inspired. This has not happened here. I will try again.

The First Indian on the Moon is slowly heading my way, possibly on return from celestial roamings, used but in good condition, showing only a little wear. I hope to find myself wishing on more than a single star as I finish that book. In fact, I hope to wish on even more than two stars. It is an earlier book than either of the other two I've read from Alexie thus far. Maybe it had more strength to fight the current and leap from the wake with greater frequency and effect.

[Vera · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven’t read more than a handful of Sherman Alexie’s poems even though everyone who knows me knows Reservation Blues is one of my most favorite novels ever; one I go back to in whole or in part periodically. But I think some of Sherman Alexie’s writing is, well, not very good and sometimes it is pretty good but I would still enjoy the opportunity to have a lively conversation with him in person. (Yet when he is good, he is very, very good.)

When I read poetry books I usually only read one or two, never more than 3 or 4, poems at a time and then let them roll around in the back of my brain for hours or days, but today, I picked up One Stick Song and read every page from first to last within 2 hours. I still took pauses here and there to let the beautiful words simmer but this wasn’t a slow cooker meal, it was a 15-minute, one pan, yet nutritionally balanced and quite satisfying lunch. In the future I will read more of his poetry books more slowly. Obviously I was starving today, but I really did find this book delicious just the same.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexie is a terrific writer. His poetry is funny, beautiful, and sharp, often all at the same time. I actually most enjoyed his two essays included, however. The essays are a loose collection of autobiographical anecdotes, told well, and some awfully interesting stories and observations.

I chose to read this book as part of my personal consciousness raising related to the current rise of the Idle No More movement. I enjoyed it because it was excellent, challenging literature, not merely as a political issue or statement, though it worked on that level as well.

(edit just to note that I did skip one poem about an insect - too squeamish - so hopefully it's not offensive or in some way would have coloured my review).

[courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

so far, i am only through the first poem, which is intense and incredibly emotional (and long). i have only read mr. alexie's fiction minimally... like a story here or there. but the clarity of this man's language definitely enlarges my understanding of what contemporary poetry is and what it can do. growing up on the east coast i have almost no frame of reference for these stories... which is how i felt watching smoke signals years ago. this man is almost single-handedly letting me and my demographic in on reservation culture.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading Sherman Alexie's poetry in a different way than I read his novels. Having read War Dances last year it was fascinating to return to this earlier work. The father-son relationship plays out over and over, from one perspective here, another in "What We Mean When We Say Phoenix, Arizona" and in War Dances. Funny, sexy, brutal. It's poetry as a weapon of truth not poetry with a little p. I particularly loved the longer piece called "Water" in this collection.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexie: "Have you stood in a crowded room where nobody looks like you? . . . If you are a woman, have you stood in a room full of men?"

That happened to me all the time when I lived in Japan. Sometimes I just pretended I was Mr. Spock.

Some interesting pieces here, both poetry and prose, but sometimes Alexie gets carried away with himself.

The best pieces are about Alexie's family and his childhood. "Sugar Town," the last piece in the book, is especially moving.

[Maureen Melle · Rating 5 out of 5]

One Stick Song

/
In this book Mr. Alexie talks about his feelings when his father has his foot amputated. I can say that when my father had his amputated and later passed away, I had some similar feelings. This may also be a metaphor for his feelings that he has lost his Indianness. I do not like the oral read along vocal tract so I just read for myself. Overall_ an excellent book.

[Emilia P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, god. I love you Sherman Alexie for so many reasons.
He is so mad and happy and matter-of-fact about his life story and about his craft.

There is a great poem in here about how much poets SUCK.
There is some stuff about his father.
There are some odd strains of Ginsberg.
I need to be an Alexie completist.

[Sharyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't realize that so much of Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was biographical. But this earlier volume shows me that so much of the book was true. I liked the mixture of prose and poetry. I liked his take on whites and Indians as well as his honesty about sexual themes. I'll think about adding one of his adult novels to my reading list.

[Sandy Brusin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Multi-genre book is a mixed bag. Some of the poetry gave me pause like this:

Parenthood is no miracle.
There is no magic involved.
There is only the rough sandpaper
of faith, the hard work of love, ...

But the opening essay, "The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me," resonated the most for me. And it was a long time between the opening essay and that last poem.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read poetry and I'm glad this was my reintroduction to the genre. I like that he plays with form -- I never knew what the next page would bring. My favorites were Sugar Town and The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me. I haven't read any of Sherman Alexie's books yet -- but I will.

[Temoca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of the poems. They aren't ones I could bring into the calssroom though. The poems are good insight and a few have the same themes mentioned in his Young Adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sherman AlexieOne Stick Song

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Alexie's prose better. These poems seem to be missing a performer, the original reader who breathes life into them. Compression and irony are evident, but music is almost absent. My favorite pieces? "The Unauthorized Biography of Me" and "Warriors"...Yep, two prose pieces.

[John Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2000 by the fellow who brought us the movie 'Smoke Signals'. It's pretty angry. There's a lot about growing up on a reservation.

It would take me about as long to write a review as it would for you to read the book, so go read it!

[Hanako · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not, normally, much of a fan of poetry. But I love Sherman Alexie's writing. And while I was drawn a bit more to the prose pieces, his language always impresses me. Makes me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time.

[Allicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought his, Alexie's, poetry was beautiful and spoke to my heart.