SOURCE: "Gerald Vizenor: Compassionate Trickster," in American Indian Quarterly, Vol. IX, No. 1, Winter, 1985, pp. 67-73.

In the following essay, Ruoff discusses the major thrust of all of Vizenor's work, whether poetry, drama, or prose, as being an examination of relationships between tribal and non-tribal worlds.

Gerald Vizenor (Ojibwe) is one of the most prolific Indian authors writing today. To have published so extensively in so many genres is a remarkable achievement for any author, Indian or non-Indian. Now primarily known as a prose writer, Vizenor began as a poet, publishing early in his career such volumes as Raising the Moon Vines (1964), Summer in the Spring (1965), Empty Swings (1967), Slight Abrasions (1966; with Jerome Downes). His Seventeen Chirps (1965; unpaged) has rightly been praised by Louis Untermeyer as Haiku "in the best tradition" (book cover). Divided into poems on the four seasons, this collection contains such strikingly beautiful images as "Spider threads...