Ghost River

Poetry. Native American Studies. These poems are porcupine quills beautiful and sharp. They draw blood. They make me laugh and cry. I love this book.&;Sherman Alexie Poet fiction writer screenwriter Trevino Brings Plentys poetry ignites a sunrise bearing witness to Indigenous Americas most difficult and invisible realities. Faced with these urgent poems we are again reminded of our constant fight for survival. Brings Plenty embarks on a telling that will inspire and challenge our notions of how we experience our modern colonial lives.&;Sherwin Bitsui Author of Floodsong. Reading Trevino Brings Plentys poems is a head adjustment. As hard as these poems work to defy the stereotype of Native American spirituality they also act like ceremonies&;new ones&;the anti-vision quest spirit guide avoidance songs to survive shame good days NOT to die. Trevino Brings Plenty is no sham- shaman but he is a healer and a true one.&;Heid Erdrich Author of Cell Traffic and National Monuments. Brings Plenty has come into his own power with this new book of poems. These are the poems of a hardcore rez visionary who is &;map(ping) the spirit world&;. Each poem carries a light born of struggle and like vision each illumination has its cost&;Personal history is utterly tied to the historical DNA of family a place. Through the journey of these poems a map emerges. In this map you will find a way home.&;Joy Harjo Mvskoke poet musician performer professor Trevino Brings Plenty has the soul of a poet no doubt. In fact he might have two of them&;the other used to belong to America until he ripped it out of her still-beating heart and ate it. Like some NDNero Paganini Brings Plentys verbiage whirls away the death of the old millennium and feverishly writes in the new. Bring a bottle of something good to drink and watch it all go down. Epirezigenetics and bridges. Grandmas and the double helix. 4D worlds and porcupines. Ghost shirts and cycles endless. Mni wiconi and broken bottles headless. Iktomi takes the pen and Brings Plenty handles his business.&;Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. Ph.D. Assistant Professor Native American Studies Department University of Montana