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Face
Poetry. Fiction. Native American Studies. In this first full collection in nine years, Alexie's poems and prose show his celebrated passion and wit while also exploring new directions. Novelist, storyteller and performer, he won the National Book Award for his YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. His work has been praised throughout the world, but the bedrock remains what The New York Times Book Review said of his very first "Mr. Alexie's is one of the major lyric voices of our time."
160 pages, Hardcover
First published March 18, 2009
14 people are currently reading
701 people want to read
About the author
Sherman Alexie
129 books6,663 followersSherman Alexie is a Native American author, poet, and filmmaker known for his powerful portrayals of contemporary Indigenous life, often infused with wit, humor, and emotional depth. Drawing heavily on his experiences growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Alexie's work addresses complex themes such as identity, poverty, addiction, and the legacy of colonialism, all filtered through a distinctly Native perspective.
His breakout book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is a semi-autobiographical young adult novel that won the 2007 National Book Award and remains widely acclaimed for its candid and humorous depiction of adolescence and cultural dislocation. Earlier, Alexie gained critical attention with The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a collection of interconnected short stories that was adapted into the Sundance-winning film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he wrote the screenplay. He also authored the novels Reservation Blues, Indian Killer, and Flight, as well as numerous poetry collections including The Business of Fancydancing and Face.
Born with hydrocephalus, Alexie faced health and social challenges from an early age but demonstrated early academic talent and a deep love for reading. He left the reservation for high school and later studied at Washington State University, where a poetry course shifted his path toward literature. His mentor, poet Alex Kuo, introduced him to Native American writers, profoundly shaping his voice.
In 2018, Alexie faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment, which led to widespread fallout, including rescinded honors and changes in how his work is promoted in educational and literary institutions. He acknowledged causing harm but denied specific accusations. Despite the controversy, his influence on contemporary Native American literature remains significant.
Throughout his career, Alexie has received many awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award for War Dances and an American Book Award for Reservation Blues. He has also been a prominent advocate for Native youth and a founding member of Longhouse Media, promoting Indigenous storytelling through film.
Whether through poetry, prose, or film, Alexie’s work continues to challenge stereotypes and elevate Native American voices in American culture.
His breakout book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is a semi-autobiographical young adult novel that won the 2007 National Book Award and remains widely acclaimed for its candid and humorous depiction of adolescence and cultural dislocation. Earlier, Alexie gained critical attention with The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a collection of interconnected short stories that was adapted into the Sundance-winning film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he wrote the screenplay. He also authored the novels Reservation Blues, Indian Killer, and Flight, as well as numerous poetry collections including The Business of Fancydancing and Face.
Born with hydrocephalus, Alexie faced health and social challenges from an early age but demonstrated early academic talent and a deep love for reading. He left the reservation for high school and later studied at Washington State University, where a poetry course shifted his path toward literature. His mentor, poet Alex Kuo, introduced him to Native American writers, profoundly shaping his voice.
In 2018, Alexie faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment, which led to widespread fallout, including rescinded honors and changes in how his work is promoted in educational and literary institutions. He acknowledged causing harm but denied specific accusations. Despite the controversy, his influence on contemporary Native American literature remains significant.
Throughout his career, Alexie has received many awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award for War Dances and an American Book Award for Reservation Blues. He has also been a prominent advocate for Native youth and a founding member of Longhouse Media, promoting Indigenous storytelling through film.
Whether through poetry, prose, or film, Alexie’s work continues to challenge stereotypes and elevate Native American voices in American culture.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
November 5, 2024
I can appreciate the precision of vocabulary required for a poet to express thoughts, feelings and moods in so limited a space.
I do not usually seek poetry out on purpose.
Song lyrics, maybe.
John Lithgow's satirical political limericks ? Yeah. Good stuff.
So, FACE by Sherman Alexie. Why this and not Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson ? Don't know. Doesn't really matter,though. Didn't have to read it or analyze it for a class. Just picked it up because Amazon said I'd probably like it.
Turns out I liked it. It was funny, wity, sometimes coarse.
It was personal, ironic, self deprecating. Sometimes in the middle or at the end of a poem Alexie would drift into prose to elaborate on an image or theme.....as if he got bored with meter and verse and still wanted to say more. He tackles the birds and the bees ( in both senses of that expression), husbands and wives, fathers and sons.
I recommend his theme-poems like "Size Matters" (10 short poems under that title ) and "The 7 Deadly Sins of Marriage “ (7 " sins", 7 poems.)
So, if you really don't have to read any poetry or are not particularly fond of poetry, try these........
I do not usually seek poetry out on purpose.
Song lyrics, maybe.
John Lithgow's satirical political limericks ? Yeah. Good stuff.
So, FACE by Sherman Alexie. Why this and not Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson ? Don't know. Doesn't really matter,though. Didn't have to read it or analyze it for a class. Just picked it up because Amazon said I'd probably like it.
Turns out I liked it. It was funny, wity, sometimes coarse.
It was personal, ironic, self deprecating. Sometimes in the middle or at the end of a poem Alexie would drift into prose to elaborate on an image or theme.....as if he got bored with meter and verse and still wanted to say more. He tackles the birds and the bees ( in both senses of that expression), husbands and wives, fathers and sons.
I recommend his theme-poems like "Size Matters" (10 short poems under that title ) and "The 7 Deadly Sins of Marriage “ (7 " sins", 7 poems.)
So, if you really don't have to read any poetry or are not particularly fond of poetry, try these........
August 9, 2016
I spent thirty-five minutes writing a really in-depth analysis of the issues in this volume of poetry and why I'm starting to dislike Sherman Alexie, but then I lost the whole thing because my computer mouse fell on the floor and exited me out of the web-page. So, I'll make this brief.
-He's body-shaming/monitoring, talking about his and other people's size many many times. Alexie goes so far as to say that Bill Clinton was impeached "not because he was a lying asshole who slept with an intern, but because he was a lying asshole who slept with a chubby intern." He says that he is not mysogynistic for saying this, but is "actually rallying against misogyny."
-He's cissexist, which is most obvious in two poems here, one about men and penises and the other about menstrual cycles and how "every woman has a story" about them. As a reminder, not all people who have menstrual cycles are women, and not all women have menstrual cycles. In conjunction with that, penises are not synonymous with man-ness.
-He writes casually about sexual violence, using trigger words with little context; and he writes very casually about the violent deaths of animals. Nearly every animal mentioned in this book died in a graphically described way within lines of their introduction. It got to the point where I'd skip to the next poem if I saw any mention of an animal, because I knew only bad things could happen to them there.
This next paragraph still pertains to my feelings about the author, though it deals with a different work of his.
In "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian", Alexie (through his narrator) shames a white teenage girl for having an eating disorder, because his people's consumption habits were at the mercy of the United States government. As someone recovering from an ED and from self-harming habits, I'm sick of being made to feel bad for the ways that I cope with anxiety, hopelessness, and low self-esteem. Eating disorders can occur in people of any gender, any ethnicity, and any economic class, so it's really frustrating when people say that these disorders are just a "rich white girl thing". It's not something people [usually] do frivolously; it often comes out of trauma and/or a bad family environment, it can sometimes be genetic, and it can kill you. Even though it was a terrible place, I probably would have died from my own eating disorder if I hadn't been forced into a recovery clinic days after graduating high school. When you portray characters with problems as shallow people just looking for attention, you perpetuate that stereotype and make it harder for people who actually do have those problems to be taken seriously. And that is unacceptable.
-He's body-shaming/monitoring, talking about his and other people's size many many times. Alexie goes so far as to say that Bill Clinton was impeached "not because he was a lying asshole who slept with an intern, but because he was a lying asshole who slept with a chubby intern." He says that he is not mysogynistic for saying this, but is "actually rallying against misogyny."
-He's cissexist, which is most obvious in two poems here, one about men and penises and the other about menstrual cycles and how "every woman has a story" about them. As a reminder, not all people who have menstrual cycles are women, and not all women have menstrual cycles. In conjunction with that, penises are not synonymous with man-ness.
-He writes casually about sexual violence, using trigger words with little context; and he writes very casually about the violent deaths of animals. Nearly every animal mentioned in this book died in a graphically described way within lines of their introduction. It got to the point where I'd skip to the next poem if I saw any mention of an animal, because I knew only bad things could happen to them there.
This next paragraph still pertains to my feelings about the author, though it deals with a different work of his.
In "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian", Alexie (through his narrator) shames a white teenage girl for having an eating disorder, because his people's consumption habits were at the mercy of the United States government. As someone recovering from an ED and from self-harming habits, I'm sick of being made to feel bad for the ways that I cope with anxiety, hopelessness, and low self-esteem. Eating disorders can occur in people of any gender, any ethnicity, and any economic class, so it's really frustrating when people say that these disorders are just a "rich white girl thing". It's not something people [usually] do frivolously; it often comes out of trauma and/or a bad family environment, it can sometimes be genetic, and it can kill you. Even though it was a terrible place, I probably would have died from my own eating disorder if I hadn't been forced into a recovery clinic days after graduating high school. When you portray characters with problems as shallow people just looking for attention, you perpetuate that stereotype and make it harder for people who actually do have those problems to be taken seriously. And that is unacceptable.
July 3, 2010
Sheman Alexie is one of my favorite living writers. Not only has he written some amazing short story collections and novels (and screenplays!), but he also written a number of poetry collections. His newest book, War Dances, features a combination of short stories and poems, but this book, Face, is the first full-on poetry collection of his that I have read. I found myself caught up in his words--sometimes I was laughing and smiling, other times I felt sad and somber. Alexie is a master at crafting poems that speak to the core of our humanity. He touches on family, loss, memory, fathers, sons, sex, writers, marriage, and more. While he does write free verse, he tends to gravitate toward poems with a more formal structure, particularly the sonnet. He rhymes adeptly, even though he likes to sometimes (humorously) point out his poor attempts at rhyming. This is a collection of poems that I will return to, to read again, to savor.
Favorites include:
Avian Nights, Wheat, The Blood Sonnets, The Seven Deadly Sins of Marriage, Scarlet, A Comic Interlude, Nudity Clause, Psalm 101, On the Second Anniversary of My Father's Death, Size Matters, Reading Light, Thrash
Favorites include:
Avian Nights, Wheat, The Blood Sonnets, The Seven Deadly Sins of Marriage, Scarlet, A Comic Interlude, Nudity Clause, Psalm 101, On the Second Anniversary of My Father's Death, Size Matters, Reading Light, Thrash
July 6, 2019
If I hadn't read his work before, I'd have read this and thought the guy was nuts.
This collection feels a little more chaotic, a little more perverse, a little less culture focused, and a little more...horny(?) than what I've read by him previously. Yet I couldn't help but admiring him page after page after page in a book that ends with "Will we have penises in Heaven? I can only tell you with certainty that I won't." Very end. Completely blank page after that with not even a misplaced ink smudge on it.
...I praise
Death because I am
Alive and will die,
If not at the hands
Of another man,
Then by the slow hunt
Of mortality.
Ah, yes. That's it.
4 Stars
This collection feels a little more chaotic, a little more perverse, a little less culture focused, and a little more...horny(?) than what I've read by him previously. Yet I couldn't help but admiring him page after page after page in a book that ends with "Will we have penises in Heaven? I can only tell you with certainty that I won't." Very end. Completely blank page after that with not even a misplaced ink smudge on it.
...I praise
Death because I am
Alive and will die,
If not at the hands
Of another man,
Then by the slow hunt
Of mortality.
Ah, yes. That's it.
4 Stars
March 4, 2010
Thank you, Sherman Alexie. I think you are the only person in the universe who would rhyme ‘dickwad’ with ‘God’ in a poem. For that, I love you.
I roll my eyes at you sometimes when you are being a pretentious, arrogant, self-centered asshole. But then you write a poem admitting that you are a ‘raging, incoherent, vindictive, self-loathing and needy asshole’ (79) and you refer to your own poetry as ‘lame.’ I guess that means I have to forgive you?
Then you write a bunch of amazing sonnets. So cool. So hip. Subjects include menstruation, death, pots and pans, fat, and sex. Did I mention sex? Alexie seems to think of little else.
The poems are cheesy, okay, most of them are self-conscious and awkward, and a lot of them are flat-out inappropriate. Just like the poet himself, when I’ve seen him speak – he danced around the stage, awkward, self-deprecating, inappropriate and offensive as hell. And hilarious as all get out.
I am in awe of Alexie’s ability to be simultaneously nerdy, racy, tiresome, hilarious, scrappy, weird, and graceful.
Alexie offers us a complex persona. In his speaking and writing, he comes across as sarcastic, witty, insightful, critical and intelligent. But at the same time he can be offensive, unapologetic, ego-bloated, and foul-mouthed.
There just aren’t enough adjectives to accurately describe Alexie’s poetry. I was consistently surprised, occasionally moved and always kept on my toes by these poems.
He gives us some beautiful moments. “Crow Boom” is one of my favourite poems in the collection. It is violent, like many of the poems, and meditates on death, life and masculinity in a loving and lyrical way. It is one of the poems I will enjoy reading again and again.
The poem is full of love and praise for all these elements of life, for the weaknesses of men and the fragility of flesh. I love the last stanza in which Alexie invokes the crow “To remind us how / To be better men” (108).
“Tuxedo with Eagle Feathers” is another elegant achievement celebrating cultural borrowing and blending. Like a hand-sewn tuxedo with Haida symbols incorporated into the design, Alexie writes his own “hybrid sonnet sequence... an indigenous celebration of colonialism or maybe a colonial celebration of the indigenous” (81).
Typical of a lot of the poems in this book, the alternating prose and poetry contains numerous self-references (“This sonnet, like my reservation”) and a healthy dose of humorous self-deprecation (“I’m built like a chicken. Do you have a tuxedo sized for a giant human chicken?”).
Alexie verges into the absurd with his poems weighed down by pages and pages of footnotes, goofy, tangential, pseudo-academic, or revisionist, such as the footnote to the line “That, after my dear father turned into air,”
Self-consciousness is probably one of the defining characteristics of this collection. Self-awareness in these poems goes far beyond Alexie deriding himself or his work, which he does plenty of -- “And yes, once again, I was paid a shitload of money, / But I tried to create passionate and hilarious art” (28) -- and takes us into the realm of the poem becoming conscious of its own creation.
His overly self-conscious criticism of his own work gets tiring. In the last extended poem, a sixteen-page love-song to his dick, Alexie includes whole sections of ironic self-flagellation.
The book ends with Alexie arguing with his wife over whether God has a penis or not. It seems fitting, somehow.
Alexie’s genius is in somehow holding it all together. We can’t separate the crassness from the beauty. His gorgeous moments of insight, pain, mourning, and worship are not isolated from the stink and wretchedness of his anger and self-hatred. It’s all intertwined. While Alexie’s words might seem simplistic, rough and crude at times, he has created something emotionally complex and very intense.
I roll my eyes at you sometimes when you are being a pretentious, arrogant, self-centered asshole. But then you write a poem admitting that you are a ‘raging, incoherent, vindictive, self-loathing and needy asshole’ (79) and you refer to your own poetry as ‘lame.’ I guess that means I have to forgive you?
Then you write a bunch of amazing sonnets. So cool. So hip. Subjects include menstruation, death, pots and pans, fat, and sex. Did I mention sex? Alexie seems to think of little else.
The poems are cheesy, okay, most of them are self-conscious and awkward, and a lot of them are flat-out inappropriate. Just like the poet himself, when I’ve seen him speak – he danced around the stage, awkward, self-deprecating, inappropriate and offensive as hell. And hilarious as all get out.
I’ve never been to Mount Rushmore. It’s just too silly. Even now, as I write this, I’m thinking
About the T-shirt that has four presidential faces on the front and four bare asses on the back.
(from “Vilify,” 29)
I am in awe of Alexie’s ability to be simultaneously nerdy, racy, tiresome, hilarious, scrappy, weird, and graceful.
Alexie offers us a complex persona. In his speaking and writing, he comes across as sarcastic, witty, insightful, critical and intelligent. But at the same time he can be offensive, unapologetic, ego-bloated, and foul-mouthed.
There just aren’t enough adjectives to accurately describe Alexie’s poetry. I was consistently surprised, occasionally moved and always kept on my toes by these poems.
He gives us some beautiful moments. “Crow Boom” is one of my favourite poems in the collection. It is violent, like many of the poems, and meditates on death, life and masculinity in a loving and lyrical way. It is one of the poems I will enjoy reading again and again.
I’m not a hunter,
But I need to eat
What my hunters kill.
So I praise hunters
...
All food is holy
And deserves our praise.
I praise the robin
That died for the crow.
I praise animals
Who are killed for me.
...
... I praise
Death because I am
Alive and will die (106)
The poem is full of love and praise for all these elements of life, for the weaknesses of men and the fragility of flesh. I love the last stanza in which Alexie invokes the crow “To remind us how / To be better men” (108).
“Tuxedo with Eagle Feathers” is another elegant achievement celebrating cultural borrowing and blending. Like a hand-sewn tuxedo with Haida symbols incorporated into the design, Alexie writes his own “hybrid sonnet sequence... an indigenous celebration of colonialism or maybe a colonial celebration of the indigenous” (81).
Typical of a lot of the poems in this book, the alternating prose and poetry contains numerous self-references (“This sonnet, like my reservation”) and a healthy dose of humorous self-deprecation (“I’m built like a chicken. Do you have a tuxedo sized for a giant human chicken?”).
Alexie verges into the absurd with his poems weighed down by pages and pages of footnotes, goofy, tangential, pseudo-academic, or revisionist, such as the footnote to the line “That, after my dear father turned into air,”
5 This is a bullshit way to say, “My dad died.”
He wasn’t “dear,” either, but he wasn’t cruel.
(from “Song Son Blue,” 65)
Self-consciousness is probably one of the defining characteristics of this collection. Self-awareness in these poems goes far beyond Alexie deriding himself or his work, which he does plenty of -- “And yes, once again, I was paid a shitload of money, / But I tried to create passionate and hilarious art” (28) -- and takes us into the realm of the poem becoming conscious of its own creation.
I walked home,
Chanted the first lines of this poem
And committed them to memory.
And if a few strangers thought me crazy
(from “Mystery Train,” 97)
His overly self-conscious criticism of his own work gets tiring. In the last extended poem, a sixteen-page love-song to his dick, Alexie includes whole sections of ironic self-flagellation.
Some think I’ve betrayed their trust,
That I’ve said far too much
About blowjobs, shit, and piss.
They might be right about this.
(from “Thrash,” 148)
The book ends with Alexie arguing with his wife over whether God has a penis or not. It seems fitting, somehow.
Alexie’s genius is in somehow holding it all together. We can’t separate the crassness from the beauty. His gorgeous moments of insight, pain, mourning, and worship are not isolated from the stink and wretchedness of his anger and self-hatred. It’s all intertwined. While Alexie’s words might seem simplistic, rough and crude at times, he has created something emotionally complex and very intense.
January 21, 2018
Synopsis
A collection of poetry that explores Sherman Alexie from his own personal viewpoint and discusses many of the aspects of his life from young age, to growing up, to being an adult. A mixed bag of concepts and ideas.
Face by Sherman Alexie
★★★★
Genre: Poetry
Release Date: April 2009
Source: Library – Borrowed
On My Shelf: No
face.jpg
I have some pretty conflicting feelings about this poetry collection. On one hand, I liked how honest, raw, and experimental Alexie’s words are. I’ve always appreciated his honestly, even when he sometimes comes off a little too filled with arrogance. At least he admits it, I guess?
I found myself laughing out loud at some of these poems and chuckling fondly at others. Then there were a few that gave me goosebumps, pulling something out of me I didn’t realize was there. This was the part of this book that I enjoyed, thoroughly.
But, that leads me then to talking about what I didn’t like so much. All the footnotes. I was not a fan of them. They often distracted from the flow of the poetry and caused some of the poems to feel choppy, like the ocean during a storm, and made me, the reader, feel like I was on a ship without an anchor.
The next thing that left me unsettled was the feeling that many of these poems were problematic and even, at times, offensive to different groups of people both small and large. This was just a strange gut-feeling I was left with and wasn’t all that explicit, but it was lingering in the corner of my mind and caused me to critique these poems more intensely. Maybe I was finding something in nothing, but I am always a huge gut-reaction truster.
That being said, I still couldn’t bring myself to rate this lower than 4 stars, because I do enjoy Alexie’s work, but I’ll definitely be reading it with a different lens from this point forward.
Do I recommend this? I’m not sure. I want to say yes, but I’m not sure who exactly to recommend this for/to. If you like Alexie’s work, I’d say give this a go, but I maybe wouldn’t start here if you’re new to his writing.
Review originally published on my Wordpress blog Ashly Reads.
A collection of poetry that explores Sherman Alexie from his own personal viewpoint and discusses many of the aspects of his life from young age, to growing up, to being an adult. A mixed bag of concepts and ideas.
Face by Sherman Alexie
★★★★
Genre: Poetry
Release Date: April 2009
Source: Library – Borrowed
On My Shelf: No
face.jpg
I have some pretty conflicting feelings about this poetry collection. On one hand, I liked how honest, raw, and experimental Alexie’s words are. I’ve always appreciated his honestly, even when he sometimes comes off a little too filled with arrogance. At least he admits it, I guess?
I found myself laughing out loud at some of these poems and chuckling fondly at others. Then there were a few that gave me goosebumps, pulling something out of me I didn’t realize was there. This was the part of this book that I enjoyed, thoroughly.
But, that leads me then to talking about what I didn’t like so much. All the footnotes. I was not a fan of them. They often distracted from the flow of the poetry and caused some of the poems to feel choppy, like the ocean during a storm, and made me, the reader, feel like I was on a ship without an anchor.
The next thing that left me unsettled was the feeling that many of these poems were problematic and even, at times, offensive to different groups of people both small and large. This was just a strange gut-feeling I was left with and wasn’t all that explicit, but it was lingering in the corner of my mind and caused me to critique these poems more intensely. Maybe I was finding something in nothing, but I am always a huge gut-reaction truster.
That being said, I still couldn’t bring myself to rate this lower than 4 stars, because I do enjoy Alexie’s work, but I’ll definitely be reading it with a different lens from this point forward.
Do I recommend this? I’m not sure. I want to say yes, but I’m not sure who exactly to recommend this for/to. If you like Alexie’s work, I’d say give this a go, but I maybe wouldn’t start here if you’re new to his writing.
Review originally published on my Wordpress blog Ashly Reads.
July 21, 2021
For crying out loud, please read this.
July 11, 2022
Though I’m not too keen on all the sexual exploits, it does go along with the “not afraid to talk about any subject” mantra that keeps me coming back for more of Alexie’s work. My favorite was “Crow Boom”… a poem that I will likely frame.
February 17, 2018
Blood Sonnets alone is huge to me:
5.
With six shovels, my six cousins bury
my father's coffin in gravel and mud,
then hug my grief-smacked mother
(now married to dirt) and leave
her coat covered with blood
From their blistered hands. This is
grief, obscene and maldorous, sticky
to the touch. This is grief, the city
where the blowflies feast and lay eggs.
This is grief, one shovel punch
To my teeth, one punch to my mother's neck,
one punch each to my brother's sparrow
chests, the fifth and sixth to snap my
sister's backs. Grief, you killer,
riddler, giver of tests,
If we lie with our father in the mud,
will you make us a gift
out of his blood?
5.
With six shovels, my six cousins bury
my father's coffin in gravel and mud,
then hug my grief-smacked mother
(now married to dirt) and leave
her coat covered with blood
From their blistered hands. This is
grief, obscene and maldorous, sticky
to the touch. This is grief, the city
where the blowflies feast and lay eggs.
This is grief, one shovel punch
To my teeth, one punch to my mother's neck,
one punch each to my brother's sparrow
chests, the fifth and sixth to snap my
sister's backs. Grief, you killer,
riddler, giver of tests,
If we lie with our father in the mud,
will you make us a gift
out of his blood?
November 19, 2012
Damn Alexie is versatile - his poetry in this, his most recent collection, is mind-blowingly inventive, creative, dextrous, slips and slides around using classic forms and then breaking traditions into teeny tiny pieces and putting them together in fabulous new ways - poems that contain two different sets of footnotes, poems that are part verse and part prose, poems of such pain that they leave you breathless and of such joy they make you cry and you wish you wish you wish that there wasn't an end to this amazingly wonderful book!
January 1, 2010
An account of matter in spirit and spirit in matter a la Alexie...swinging through life impressions of HIS American culture with the kind of humor that is at once light and grave: "When Peter Sellers requested that Glenn Miller's In the Mood be played at his funeral, he knew it would be an odd choice, the last comic gesture. The genius Seller's knew that death was unusual - so bitter, brutal and wrong - But it was also slapstick, pratfall, spit take and sick trick."
August 28, 2015
None of my words could do Sherman Alexie's words justice. Part poetry, part prose, part footnotes, Face is simply wonderful. Read. It.
January 20, 2021
Having an appreciation for poetry, and having enjoyed a previous book of Mr. Alexie's, I had high hopes going into this one.
I was disappointed to find formidable talent rendered distasteful. Poems include meditations on pissing, daddy issues, penises, circumcision, more penises, penis size, and date rape. It's almost as though the author wants to fill an elegant trophy case with the worst possible selfies and dog turds. I personally don't understand that, and I'm not sure I'll venture between the covers of any further Alexie books.
Here is a sample:
"And now I remember to say:
When we celebrate our birthdays,
We celebrate our conception
And honor our parents' passions.
So, thank you, Father and Mother
For f*cking and s*cking each other.
I celebrate my mother's egg.
I celebrate my father's sperm.
I honor the need to get laid.
I honor my lovely, bloody birth."
Someone is into this, but it isn't me.
I was disappointed to find formidable talent rendered distasteful. Poems include meditations on pissing, daddy issues, penises, circumcision, more penises, penis size, and date rape. It's almost as though the author wants to fill an elegant trophy case with the worst possible selfies and dog turds. I personally don't understand that, and I'm not sure I'll venture between the covers of any further Alexie books.
Here is a sample:
"And now I remember to say:
When we celebrate our birthdays,
We celebrate our conception
And honor our parents' passions.
So, thank you, Father and Mother
For f*cking and s*cking each other.
I celebrate my mother's egg.
I celebrate my father's sperm.
I honor the need to get laid.
I honor my lovely, bloody birth."
Someone is into this, but it isn't me.
March 13, 2023
I have been reading Mr. Alexie's words for many, many years.
And I have never been let down by him.
Face takes another look at the lives of the Seattle, Washington Native Americans. Their struggles with alcoholism, his father struggle all of his life with alcohol. Growing up on the Reservation and his struggles as a writer and father, and speaker.
His wife helps him with all of these parts of his life. She is funny as well.
Don't expect a clean version of Indian life when you read Mr. Alexie's words. He has always given us a clear picture of the struggles of Native Americans on and off the Reservation.
There are many books of his poetry available as well as great stories. Smoke Signals was made into a movie.
I thank Mr. Alexie for sharing his story with me.
And I have never been let down by him.
Face takes another look at the lives of the Seattle, Washington Native Americans. Their struggles with alcoholism, his father struggle all of his life with alcohol. Growing up on the Reservation and his struggles as a writer and father, and speaker.
His wife helps him with all of these parts of his life. She is funny as well.
Don't expect a clean version of Indian life when you read Mr. Alexie's words. He has always given us a clear picture of the struggles of Native Americans on and off the Reservation.
There are many books of his poetry available as well as great stories. Smoke Signals was made into a movie.
I thank Mr. Alexie for sharing his story with me.
July 21, 2020
This book of poetry highlights Alexie’s irreverent, brash, emotional, and insightful voice. Alexie isn't afraid to explore his soul, and no topic is taboo. You can’t help but like the guy, even for all his weaknesses, prejudices, and foibles. His poetry is difficult to categorize as it's sometimes highly structured in sonnets and other poetic forms and at other times free verse or even prose. One thing it isn’t is boring: it will challenge your assumptions, philosophies, and prejudices whether you want it to or not.
July 21, 2021
(Added to this list on 7/21/21) I am an Alexis fan and by in large I enjoyed reading this small collections of poems by this Indigenous author. There were lots of sexual references and foul language, which isn't my thing. I did enjoy the footnotes because they were by and large illuminating and funny. I never had any success getting this book into students' hands while I was a teen librarian.
February 12, 2018
This man, Sherman Alexie, sexually abuses women serially and I will never support his work.
Read the comments section: http://www.slj.com/2018/01/industry-n...
Read the comments section: http://www.slj.com/2018/01/industry-n...
October 8, 2020
I'm not a poetry lover - but I do enjoy Alexie's poetry. He often talks about oddball things, doesn't try to be fancy so that you have intrepret his poems.. he tells stories with his poetry. Appreciate that!!
August 9, 2024
Tends towards being juvenile- both with how he plays with words and his phallic focus, yes, but with an interesting self consciousness (not so much self awareness) that makes him feel very present with the audience, except when he is angry, because being self conscious about being angry only makes one feel angrier. Some good cold stunners and lines round out the levity.
July 30, 2017
Beautiful, profane, funny
January 9, 2018
Hilarious, naughty, spiritual, poetic, repulsive, and self-contradictory. Absolutely gorgeous.
January 25, 2018
All I've got to say is "snake+snake+snake=snake".
I lied. Also the part about the dad being jealous because his son loves his mom and his wife loves his son.
I lied. Also the part about the dad being jealous because his son loves his mom and his wife loves his son.
May 30, 2019
Another great book of poems by one of my favourite authors.
March 3, 2024
Great ideas, lukewarm writing. It’s almost like Alexie doesn’t have the chops to write poems good enough for his ideas.
April 6, 2011
Sherman Alexies’ poetry collection Face is a confusing grab bag of brilliant heart felt prose and poetry, and hastily slapped together pieces that are glued together by nothing more than the “edgy” word choice. I honestly have no idea how I feel about this book. On poems such as “The Father and Son Road Show” I feel as though I am able to connect with Sherman, as he does contain the unmistakable talent to turn emotions into words and images. However, flip another page and I find poems such as “In the Mood” where it feels as if what is in front of me are the notes of a failed stand-up comedian.
The content of the book is much what has come to be expected of Sherman, Pages and pages of poetry about his Native American heritage, his father and his children. Lines such as “My wife wanted to give my sons the chance/ To see my tribe’s powwow with transparent eyes,/ And maybe fall in love with the chicken dance” (from the poem “Chicken”) exemplify what Sherman is all about. While most of the writing he does on his family and his heritage can be touching and vivid, others seem to create a sort of “overkill” effect where you feel is if he wants words such as “father”, “son”, “tribe”, “eagle feathers” and “powwow” to pile up on the page and drill you in the head. At a certain point these themes start to repeat themselves to the point where you may or may not want to read about them any longer depending on how much you’re actually able to connect with them.
Alexie’s writing style comes across as easily readable yet deep and profound. Alexie uses words and phrases that everyone has heard and can identify with. At times it can feel as if the piece that you are reading could be nothing more than the transcript of thoughts that you’ve had in your own head, or conversations you’ve had with your friends. On the flipside of this Alexie proves that “big emotions” don’t need “big words”. In spite of his almost layman way of wording things, Alexie channels his inner Hemingway, allowing the few words that he does put down to come across as all being pertinent and meaningful. One example that illustrates this is “Let us remember the wasps/ That hibernated in the walls/ Of the house next door. Its walls/ Bulged with twenty pounds of wasps”. With very few words and without outwardly saying it, Alexie creates the image of a buzzing throbbing house sitting adjacent to his.
Metaphors and similes quite frequently come across as Alexie’s favorite devices. It seems that there is not a single page that you can glance your eyes over without picking up at least one simile comparing his heart to that of an ancient native American warrior’s, or a metaphor that set a characters eyes ablaze in a fit of rage.
While the metaphors he uses are well put together and vivid, it seems as though he prefers to use this gift to describe the facets of native American life. This can create a problem for some readers such as myself who have no native American blood in them at all and the only things that I know about native American life I learned in first grade around Thanksgiving.
The other great issue that I have with this book is that at times Alexie seems to abandon his craft to pursue poetry and prose that should be spoken in a half-hearted comedy routine than written down in stanzas. Such pieces as “Inappropriate” which documents Alexie’s hallucination that F. Scott Fitgerald came back to life and tried to seduce Alexie, come across as slightly humorous but mostly awkward, and are made more awkward by his use of curse words. Reading the profanity in some of Alexie’s work is like listening to a child swear for the first time, it doesn’t seem to be placed properly so to make up for it a swear is used in almost every line.
It’s hard to say how I feel about this book. In spite of spots of brilliance and powerful writing, after reading this I feel somehow unfulfilled. I believe this may be to the fact that for every relevant well thought out piece that Alexie wrote for this, he balanced it off with some childish drivel that’s hardly readable. I would like to say that I loved half of this book and leave it at that, however on the whole I have to say that any brilliance that may shine in this book is dimmed by the equally abundant nonsense that encompasses the book. I would suggest reading this book just for the worthwhile prose and poetry in it. Should the reader come across a piece that has an opening line laced with profanity, skip it and move to the next piece.
The content of the book is much what has come to be expected of Sherman, Pages and pages of poetry about his Native American heritage, his father and his children. Lines such as “My wife wanted to give my sons the chance/ To see my tribe’s powwow with transparent eyes,/ And maybe fall in love with the chicken dance” (from the poem “Chicken”) exemplify what Sherman is all about. While most of the writing he does on his family and his heritage can be touching and vivid, others seem to create a sort of “overkill” effect where you feel is if he wants words such as “father”, “son”, “tribe”, “eagle feathers” and “powwow” to pile up on the page and drill you in the head. At a certain point these themes start to repeat themselves to the point where you may or may not want to read about them any longer depending on how much you’re actually able to connect with them.
Alexie’s writing style comes across as easily readable yet deep and profound. Alexie uses words and phrases that everyone has heard and can identify with. At times it can feel as if the piece that you are reading could be nothing more than the transcript of thoughts that you’ve had in your own head, or conversations you’ve had with your friends. On the flipside of this Alexie proves that “big emotions” don’t need “big words”. In spite of his almost layman way of wording things, Alexie channels his inner Hemingway, allowing the few words that he does put down to come across as all being pertinent and meaningful. One example that illustrates this is “Let us remember the wasps/ That hibernated in the walls/ Of the house next door. Its walls/ Bulged with twenty pounds of wasps”. With very few words and without outwardly saying it, Alexie creates the image of a buzzing throbbing house sitting adjacent to his.
Metaphors and similes quite frequently come across as Alexie’s favorite devices. It seems that there is not a single page that you can glance your eyes over without picking up at least one simile comparing his heart to that of an ancient native American warrior’s, or a metaphor that set a characters eyes ablaze in a fit of rage.
While the metaphors he uses are well put together and vivid, it seems as though he prefers to use this gift to describe the facets of native American life. This can create a problem for some readers such as myself who have no native American blood in them at all and the only things that I know about native American life I learned in first grade around Thanksgiving.
The other great issue that I have with this book is that at times Alexie seems to abandon his craft to pursue poetry and prose that should be spoken in a half-hearted comedy routine than written down in stanzas. Such pieces as “Inappropriate” which documents Alexie’s hallucination that F. Scott Fitgerald came back to life and tried to seduce Alexie, come across as slightly humorous but mostly awkward, and are made more awkward by his use of curse words. Reading the profanity in some of Alexie’s work is like listening to a child swear for the first time, it doesn’t seem to be placed properly so to make up for it a swear is used in almost every line.
It’s hard to say how I feel about this book. In spite of spots of brilliance and powerful writing, after reading this I feel somehow unfulfilled. I believe this may be to the fact that for every relevant well thought out piece that Alexie wrote for this, he balanced it off with some childish drivel that’s hardly readable. I would like to say that I loved half of this book and leave it at that, however on the whole I have to say that any brilliance that may shine in this book is dimmed by the equally abundant nonsense that encompasses the book. I would suggest reading this book just for the worthwhile prose and poetry in it. Should the reader come across a piece that has an opening line laced with profanity, skip it and move to the next piece.
January 19, 2017
I had some problems with the irregular-seeming rhyme schemes and the flipping from poetry to prose, mid-piece, but his voice is so strong and funny and warm and real that I got past those more or less with ease, and just enjoyed the heck out of most of these poems. The poem "Dangerous Astronomy" made me cry. That's worth that fourth star right there.
October 29, 2009
“Sherman Alexie is America’s wooden cigar store Indian.” - unknown
A quote I found on the internet I once hated and now believe. Mr. Alexie you used to be about something. The last time I heard you speak was in 2000 and it was remarkable. I’ve read most of your earlier books and have enjoyed them very much. And now in these past couple of years it’s turned into this absurd eff this and eff that garbage every other sentence. You are not Bill Hicks. You are not Sam Kinison. You are Sherman Alexie. You've disappointed me. During those years of being away since Ten little Indians what happened to you? What would make you conjure up such a phony eff the world act. What sort of crap did you see, hear, or read in that time. It doesn’t fit the Sherman Alexie I once heard all those years ago. What could it be? You've disappointed me.
“I’m worried about young writers. I’m worried about new writers. I'm worried about the native kids out there that need my stories. And for just thirty dollars a book they too can escape the reservation of their minds.” - Sherman A.
Mr. Alexie. You used to be someone I could be proud of. And now. Your just America’s wooden cigar store Indian.
A quote I found on the internet I once hated and now believe. Mr. Alexie you used to be about something. The last time I heard you speak was in 2000 and it was remarkable. I’ve read most of your earlier books and have enjoyed them very much. And now in these past couple of years it’s turned into this absurd eff this and eff that garbage every other sentence. You are not Bill Hicks. You are not Sam Kinison. You are Sherman Alexie. You've disappointed me. During those years of being away since Ten little Indians what happened to you? What would make you conjure up such a phony eff the world act. What sort of crap did you see, hear, or read in that time. It doesn’t fit the Sherman Alexie I once heard all those years ago. What could it be? You've disappointed me.
“I’m worried about young writers. I’m worried about new writers. I'm worried about the native kids out there that need my stories. And for just thirty dollars a book they too can escape the reservation of their minds.” - Sherman A.
Mr. Alexie. You used to be someone I could be proud of. And now. Your just America’s wooden cigar store Indian.
May 7, 2016
It has been many years since I've found a book of Alexi's poetry, and when I found this I grabbed it. I was not disappointed. I was ecstatic.
Alexie shows no fear when he writes. He isn't afraid to experiment with words or with form. He not only combines prose with his poetry (poetry with his prose?), he has even found a way to use footnotes! At first, I was disconcerted with this, but as I read, I realized he had written poems within poem! Stunningly brilliant. (It reminds me of the old Choose Your Own Adventure series I bought my kids.)
I suggest you read the book before giving it to a child, no matter how precocious she might be, and be prepared to discuss whatever poems might come up in conversation, or you might be blindsided.
Alexie writes poetry for the people, not the "intelligentsia," all of his poetry is accessible, and in this book, he even explains a bit about how he writes. This collection is personal; it's about fathers and sons—his father, he as father, his sons, all fathers, all sons. There will be sadness and perhaps tears. There will also be light and laughter, especially when his wife enters the poem.
I hope we do not need to wait so long for the next collection.
Alexie shows no fear when he writes. He isn't afraid to experiment with words or with form. He not only combines prose with his poetry (poetry with his prose?), he has even found a way to use footnotes! At first, I was disconcerted with this, but as I read, I realized he had written poems within poem! Stunningly brilliant. (It reminds me of the old Choose Your Own Adventure series I bought my kids.)
I suggest you read the book before giving it to a child, no matter how precocious she might be, and be prepared to discuss whatever poems might come up in conversation, or you might be blindsided.
Alexie writes poetry for the people, not the "intelligentsia," all of his poetry is accessible, and in this book, he even explains a bit about how he writes. This collection is personal; it's about fathers and sons—his father, he as father, his sons, all fathers, all sons. There will be sadness and perhaps tears. There will also be light and laughter, especially when his wife enters the poem.
I hope we do not need to wait so long for the next collection.
May 22, 2011
I am not sure how to criticize or what to write about a book of poetry other than: I liked it. It made me laugh and think. At the end of a five page poem about Richard Pryor he writes:
“So what’s the point of this pretentious talk?/ Well, poets and comics share a toolbox/ And their geniuses build the same fires,/ So when you sing Shakespeare, I sing Pryor.” And I sing Shakespeare, Pryor and Alexie.
In another poem he’s writing about his and his son’s insomnia. “I hear a noise upstairs. What is it?/ Laughter? Joy?/ My older boy/ Lies awake./ ‘It’s late,’ I say./ ‘You need to sleep./’ ‘I need to read,’/ He says. ‘This book/ Is really good./ It makes me laugh./ Dad, please I have/ Five more pages’… How could I punish my son for reading, no matter that he’d have to drag his tired ass to school in the morning and would likely fall asleep sitting at his desk sometimes in the mid-afternoon? It reminds me of Damon Wayans who said that it is impossible for a standup comedian like him to discipline his kids for being smart assess. ‘All I can really do,’ Wayan said ‘is tell them to work on their timing.’”
“So what’s the point of this pretentious talk?/ Well, poets and comics share a toolbox/ And their geniuses build the same fires,/ So when you sing Shakespeare, I sing Pryor.” And I sing Shakespeare, Pryor and Alexie.
In another poem he’s writing about his and his son’s insomnia. “I hear a noise upstairs. What is it?/ Laughter? Joy?/ My older boy/ Lies awake./ ‘It’s late,’ I say./ ‘You need to sleep./’ ‘I need to read,’/ He says. ‘This book/ Is really good./ It makes me laugh./ Dad, please I have/ Five more pages’… How could I punish my son for reading, no matter that he’d have to drag his tired ass to school in the morning and would likely fall asleep sitting at his desk sometimes in the mid-afternoon? It reminds me of Damon Wayans who said that it is impossible for a standup comedian like him to discipline his kids for being smart assess. ‘All I can really do,’ Wayan said ‘is tell them to work on their timing.’”
March 14, 2016
"What happens to the soul that hates its reflection?" ends the poem, "Scarlet." The connection that Alexie's text makes is to Hawthorne's, The Scarlet Letter, but here, instead of Hester Prynne wearing the embroidered, elegant A, a barrista at a coffee shop in Seattle has such bad acne scars, it becomes her emblem of transfigurement and scorn, and, of course, ultimate redemption.
And this is just one poem in this collection. The poems are at once interior/inferior, gorgeous/gouging, blood-laden/boundary-breaking, sexed/hexed, intimate/ultimate. Alexie breaks down his voice with intimacy and stacks footnotes on top of end notes like a shell-encrusted midden.
My recommendation for this collection: those who should read it first are those who do not read much poetry or have had a bad experience with it. I mean, look at this one: His poem, "Tuxedo with Eagle Feathers," declares his hybrid place between two cultures. Who wins? Literature and its readers. "Hunger is my crime," it ends and so it is; Alexie's voracious appetite for words and meanings is, then, criminal. We should all be such violator
s.
And this is just one poem in this collection. The poems are at once interior/inferior, gorgeous/gouging, blood-laden/boundary-breaking, sexed/hexed, intimate/ultimate. Alexie breaks down his voice with intimacy and stacks footnotes on top of end notes like a shell-encrusted midden.
My recommendation for this collection: those who should read it first are those who do not read much poetry or have had a bad experience with it. I mean, look at this one: His poem, "Tuxedo with Eagle Feathers," declares his hybrid place between two cultures. Who wins? Literature and its readers. "Hunger is my crime," it ends and so it is; Alexie's voracious appetite for words and meanings is, then, criminal. We should all be such violator
s.
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