SOURCE: "N. Scott Momaday's Angle of Geese" in The Southern Review, Louisiana State University, Vol. XI, No. 3, Summer, 1975, pp. 658-61.

In the following review, Finlay offers a stylistic and thematic description of Angle of Geese, praising the volume as Momaday's best work.

N. Scott Momaday's reputation, before Angle of Geese, rested upon two works of prose, House Made of Dawn, a novel concerned with the dislocation and eventual disintegration of an Indian youth in urban America (parts of which were first published in The Southern Review), and The Way to Rainy Mountain, a half-mythical, half-historical account of Momaday's Kiowa ancestors, beautifully illustrated by the poet's father. These two books are considerable achievements, especially The Way to Rainy Mountain, which contains some of the most powerful prose written in recent years, or any year, for that matter. Yet Angle of Geese, made up of eighteen poems, three of which...