Carter Revard, Osage Indian poet, Rhodes scholar, and professor of medieval English literature, shares both this amazement and his amazing command of language in this first retrospective collection of 40 published and unpublished pieces written from 1970 to 1991.

An Eagle Nation (Sun Tracks)

Literature & Fiction

Revard, Carter

Poetry

University of Arizona Press

"We are given this world and some time with friends. How time dawned on mind and was beaded into language amazes me the way an orb-spider's web or a computer-chip does. . . ." Carter Revard, Osage Indian poet, Rhodes scholar, and professor of medieval English literature, shares both this amazement and his amazing command of language in this first retrospective collection of 40 published and unpublished pieces written from 1970 to 1991.

An Eagle Nation (Volume 24) (Sun Tracks)

Carter Revard was born in the Osage Indian Agency town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. One of seven children, he completed his first eight grades in a one-room country school, working as a janitor, farmhand, and greyhound trainer through high school. He won a radio quiz scholarship to the University of Tulsa, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and in 1952 was given his Osage name by his grandmother and the tribal elders. How his family coped with the dizzying extremes of the Great Depression and the Osage Oil Boom and with small-town life in the Osage hills is the subject of this book. It is about how Revard came to be a writer and a scholar, how his Osage roots have remained alive, about the alienation of being an Indian who "didn't look Indian," and about finding community, even far from home. It is also an exploration of how he and other American Indian writers are, with words, making places to live—in poems, novels, and essays, as well as on reservations and in cities. Above all, this is a book about identity, about an Osage son who grew up to find that the world is neither Indian nor white but many colors in between Told with grace and wit, Family Matters, Tribal Affairs is a moving memoir by one of our most accomplished Native American poets. Like N. Scott Momaday's The Names or Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller, this is a story—told in a rich variety of vignettes and voices—about a family, about one man, about many people. "Like that mockingbird," Revard writes, "I have more than one song, but they are all our songs. It seems to me that no one else will sing them unless I do."

Family Matters, Tribal Affairs (Sun Tracks)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Carter Revard was born in the Osage Indian Agency town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. One of seven children, he completed his first eight grades in a one-room country school, working as a janitor, farmhand, and greyhound trainer through high school. He won a radio quiz scholarship to the University of Tulsa, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and in 1952 was given his Osage name by his grandmother and the tribal elders. How his family coped with the dizzying extremes of the Great Depression and the Osage Oil Boom and with small-town life in the Osage hills is the subject of this book. It is about how Revard came to be a writer and a scholar, how his Osage roots have remained alive, about the alienation of being an Indian who "didn't look Indian," and about finding community, even far from home. It is also an exploration of how he and other American Indian writers are, with words, making places to live—in poems, novels, and essays, as well as on reservations and in cities. Above all, this is a book about identity, about an Osage son who grew up to find that the world is neither Indian nor white but many colors in between Told with grace and wit, Family Matters, Tribal Affairs is a moving memoir by one of our most accomplished Native American poets. Like N. Scott Momaday's The Names or Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller, this is a story—told in a rich variety of vignettes and voices—about a family, about one man, about many people. "Like that mockingbird," Revard writes, "I have more than one song, but they are all our songs. It seems to me that no one else will sing them unless I do."

Bootleggers and bankrobbers in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Proctors and punters at Oxford. Activists and agitators of the American Indian Movement. Carter Revard has known them all, and in this book— a memoir in prose and poetry— he interweaves the many threads of his life as only a gifted writer can.Winning the Dust Bowl traces Revard's development from a poor Oklahoma farm boy during the depths of the Depression to a respected medieval scholar and outstanding Native American poet. It recounts his search for a personal and poetic voice, his struggle to keep and expand it, and his attempt to find ways of reconciling the disparate influences of his life.In these pages, readers will find poems both new and familiar: poems of family and home, of loss and survival. In linking— what he calls "cocooning"— essays, Revard shares what he has noticed about how poems come into being, how changes in style arise from changes in life, and how language can be used to deal with one's relationship to the world. He also includes stories of Poncas and Osages, powwow stories and Oxford fables, and a gallery of photographs that capture images of his past.Revard has crafted a book about poetry and authorship, about American history and culture. Lyrical in one breath and stingingly political in the next, he calls on his mastery of language to show us the undying connection between literature and life.

Winning the Dust Bowl (Sun Tracks)

Essays & Correspondence

Bootleggers and bankrobbers in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Proctors and punters at Oxford. Activists and agitators of the American Indian Movement. Carter Revard has known them all, and in this book— a memoir in prose and poetry— he interweaves the many threads of his life as only a gifted writer can. Winning the Dust Bowl traces Revard's development from a poor Oklahoma farm boy during the depths of the Depression to a respected medieval scholar and outstanding Native American poet. It recounts his search for a personal and poetic voice, his struggle to keep and expand it, and his attempt to find ways of reconciling the disparate influences of his life. In these pages, readers will find poems both new and familiar: poems of family and home, of loss and survival. In linking— what he calls "cocooning"— essays, Revard shares what he has noticed about how poems come into being, how changes in style arise from changes in life, and how language can be used to deal with one's relationship to the world. He also includes stories of Poncas and Osages, powwow stories and Oxford fables, and a gallery of photographs that capture images of his past. Revard has crafted a book about poetry and authorship, about American history and culture. Lyrical in one breath and stingingly political in the next, he calls on his mastery of language to show us the undying connection between literature and life.

Winning the Dust Bowl (Volume 47) (Sun Tracks)

Osage poet Carter Revard's first published book of poetry.

Ponca War Dancers

Point Riders Press

Cowboys and Indians Christmas Shopping

Point Riders Pr

This major selection of Revard's work lets you hear duets of humpbacked whales and wine-throated hummingbirds. You can walk on Skye, shoot craps in Las Vegas and see an ex-bank-robbing uncle get shot dead hijacking a shipment of bootleg whiskey. You can watch a swan become a soul, see glass fibers bring tomorrow from Japan, taste watermelons transubstantiating, and track vanilla honey to a beehive on top of L'Opera Garnier.

How the Songs Come Down: New and Selected Poems (Earthworks)

Salt Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Revard, Carter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Revard, Carter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Revard, Carter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

An Eagle Nation (Sun Tracks)

An Eagle Nation (Volume 24) (Sun Tracks)

Family Matters, Tribal Affairs (Sun Tracks)

Family Matters, Tribal Affairs (Sun Tracks)

Winning the Dust Bowl (Sun Tracks)

Winning the Dust Bowl (Volume 47) (Sun Tracks)

Ponca War Dancers

Cowboys and Indians Christmas Shopping

How the Songs Come Down: New and Selected Poems (Earthworks)