More than any other genre of Native American contemporary writing, poetry most closely reflects the Native American oral tradition. Traditional prayers, songs, and chants, first performed orally and later "preserved" by non-Natives who anticipated the demise of Native cultures in the nineteenth century, serve as a bridge between the oral tradition and the work of contemporary Native poets. This early poetics was an inherent part of ceremonial life for the tribes of North America, and it continues to inform contemporary American Indian poetry. Broadly defined, Native American poetry is "religious" in the sense that "[e]very factor of human experience is seen in a religious light as part of the meaning of life," as the Lakota author Vine Deloria Jr. explains in God Is Red (p. 195). Spirituality pervades the genre: poets incorporate mythic figures and stories, contemplate their relationships to...