Songs

Charles John Greasybear

Songs is a collection of one Native American’s oral poetry captured on paper. A therapy client of the poet and psychologist Judson Crews, Charley John Greasybear told his poems to Crews, who wrote them down and assembled this collection. As J. Whitebird explains in the introduction, “Some of the poems speak clearly of his bonds to his native community, bonds which most of us will never have the good fortune to experience. Some of them cry of his violent and confused efforts to blend in with a homogenized America. But that is the point; Charley John sings openly of his view of wonderful and terrifying multiple worlds.”

A sample poem from the book

Ghost Song

That music that is not dead

always in my ears

Where does it

come from

where does it come from

Do you hear it

I ask Feathered Owl

I have always heard it

he answered

I heard it in the South Pacific

when I was there

and I hear it now

We hear it everywhere

we hear it everywhere

but once our people

danced

when they heard it

and believed a vision

We hear it still

yet I am not dancing now

and Feathered Owl

has one arm

and no legs