Nature and Native American poetry are not merely related by alliteration; they also have a spiritual bond which is a result of hundreds of years of contact and togetherness. Social protest, subjective explorations of existence and other themes are present in Native American poetry as in other American minority poetry. But the affinity between nature and the Native Americans is natural and spiritual and is conspicuously absent in contemporary poetry by other ethnic groups…. The strange cosmic perspective that haunts the Indian mind does not lose itself in its pursuit of the transitory and the superficial, although it does not totally ignore current social realities.

James Welch's poetry has all these characteristics…. (p. 142)

Welch is not always serious. The old man in "Grandma's Man" paints the cry of a goose so long that it floats off the canvas into thin air. Similar humor is seen in "Never Give...