A Web Chapbook from The Literary Review   

John E. Smelcer
A child and her grandparents died last night
when their car stranded in a snowdrift
on a backcountry road. It was dark
when the engine at last ran out of gas
and they began to walk a glacial earth
under heaven's hapless stars
and a hook of arctic moon--
ten miles through a savage wind
breaking bones in its teeth
and the soul of a young child crying.



JOHN E. SMELCER was born in 1963, and is of Ahtna Athabaskan Indian descent. Currently the Executive Director of the Ahtna Tribe's Heritage Foundation, he has held visiting professorships at universities around the world. He earned a doctorate in comparative literature in 1993 and a masters degree in literature and humanities in 1991. He is faculty at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

His recent books include Tracks: New & Selected Poems (Story Line Press, 1997), which features an introduction by Pulitzer Prize astronomer and author, Carl Sagan. His new nonfiction book, In the Shadows of Mountains (1997), features an introduction by Pulitzer Prize nature writer, Gary Snyder. His work appears in numerous international anthologies by the likes of Random House, Dover, and American Indian Press. In 1994 he edited Durable Breath: Contemporary Native American Poetry (Salmon Run & American Indian Press). His poems have appeared in such periodicals as The Atlantic Monthly, and he is poetry editor at Rosebud, among the nation's most prestigious quarterlies of poetry and fiction.

A Work by John E. Smelcer:


      INDIAN SUMMER

      There are things measured in life by death.
       
      The village girl's slow dying taught me this --
      how false summer renders dim-witted

      perceptions of nature's unpredicted ways
      as morning rises

      like a thin dark blue pencil stroke
      blending into seamless sky.

      After a time dawn slightly thins,
      while the measuring earth gathers

      its victory of snow which soon will howl
      through the bared bones of hollow forests.

      I watch as the slow dance of summer is harvested,
      knowing I've darker woods to walk than these.

      After a time dawn slightly thins,
      while the measuring earth gathers

      its victory of snow which soon will howl
      through the bared bones of hollow forests.

      I watch as the slow dance of summer is harvested,
      knowing I've darker woods to walk than these.

Selections from John E. Smelcer's work:

Poetry, Part I

Poetry, Part II

Poetry, Part III



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