Through All the Displacements

In taut, often angry poems, Silex (Even the Dead Have Memories), a Native American, takes outwardly familiar, almost stereotypic, characters-the Aztec prince, the Chicano, the drunken Indian, the absent father-and gives us personages mottled by failure, self-loathing and indifference to their own destinies. Other figures in this cast include the poet's dead brothers, his son, and Ishi, the last Native American to live as one before the arrival of the Europeans. These ghostly presences move through short, terse lines which, on occasion, lapse into information-giving. Mostly though, Silex's poetry is forceful and effective. (Sept.)