SOURCE: "Beautyway: The Poetry of N. Scott Momaday," in The South Dakota Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer, 1980, pp. 61-83.

In the essay below, Mason provides an in-depth analysis of The Gourd Dancer, examining the major themes of each section and of the volume as a whole.

N. Scott Momaday's first full-length collection of poems was finally published in 1976. Previously he had published some eighteen poems in the chapbook, Angle of Geese and Other Poems. These poems plus two others make up part 1 of The Gourd Dancer, a book which is the summation in poetry of that evolution of ideas and verbal skill we have observed in prose in House Made of Dawn, The Way to Rainy Mountain, and The Names.

The Gourd Dancer clearly establishes Momaday as a poet of some stature and demands that the close attention given his prose be given to his poetry as well. The...