The poems here are varied and powerful, with the ones carrying the most impact (for me) being the ones that either marry the sacred and the profane/contemporary, or else bring Alexie's personal history to bear on the world around him. The sequences in the first half of the book are especially striking, moving from image to image with a sort of tragic momentum that can't be ignored. For me, many of the last poems in the collection felt less successful and inspired than the poems that came in the first two thirds of the collection, but if so, that's only because the incredibly high standards that early poems in the collection set.

On the whole, I'd recommend this collection, and there are certainly poems here which I'll revisit in the future. ( )

A hodgepodge of poems and other writings. I don't get his popularity. ( )

Alexie's poetry is amazing . . . funny, yet political, yet sarcastic, yet thought-provoking. I love it. ( )

Alexie, Sherman. The Summer of Black Widows. Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York, 1996. Poetry. Autographed.