SOURCE: A review of Winter of the Salamander, in Western American Literature, Vol. XVI, No. 4, February, 1982, pp. 330-31.

In the following positive review, Pavich provides a thematic overview of Winter of the Salamander.

Ray Young Bear's volume of poetry, Winter of the Salamander, is the tenth in Harper and Row's Native American Publishing Program. The themes are those of much contemporary Native American literature: confusion, violence and death, despair and loss, anger. However, Young Bear exhibits a beautiful command of the language and an ability to elicit strong emotional responses. At times the impact of the imagery is itself like a blast from a shotgun. His landscape is filled with charred trees, half-dead animals, peeling faces, violated humans.

Much of the horror in these poems is a result of the inability of the white and Indian cultures to achieve any understanding at all. Young Bear's handling of the...